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THE 



GIST OF SPIRITUALISM 



VIEWED 



Bdeniifically^ Philosophicalli/^ Religiously ^ 
Politically, mid Socially, 



IN A COURSE OF FIVE LECTURES^ 

delivered in washington, d. c, january, 1865. 
By warren" chase, 

AUTHOB OP "life LINE OP THE LONE ONE," "THE PnGITIVE "WTFE," 
AND " THE AMEEICAN CEISIS." 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM WHITE & CO., 

158 Washington Street. 
1865. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 

WILLIAM WHITE & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



INTRODUCTION. 



These lectures were delivered to large and intelli- 
gent audiences in Smeed's Hall, over the League Rooms, 
in Washington, D. C, on the five Sunday evenings of 
January, 1865. They are not written out here as spoken, 
for no notes or even headings were taken at the time ; 
but the substance, and argument, and gist of each lec- 
ture are the same as spoken, and as written out by the 
author in February, at the quiet home of A. T. McCombs, 
Esq., in Maryland. 

W. C. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 



Eelation of Spiritualism to Science, . • . . 7 



LECTURE II. 

Eelation of Spiritualism to Nature and Nat- 
ural Philosophy, 29 

LECTURE III. 

Eelation of Spiritualism to Eeligion, espe- 
cially TO Christianity, 52 

LECTURE IV. 

Eelation of Spiritualism to Government, . . 74 

LECTURE V. 

Eelation of Spiritualism to Social Life, . . 97 

1* (5) 



THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 



JLECXXJUE I.* 

RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 

The object of this lecture will be to show the true 
relation of spiritualism to science, and to prove it 
worthy a place on the record as a great practical 
discovery to be hereafter referred to and relied on by 
future generations, as opening a new era in scientific 
phenomena and logical deductions. I am aware of 
the fact that few persons, even among those interested 
in, or believers of, spirit intercourse, know, or even sus- 
pect, that it has already carried forward the standard 
of science, and planted it not only on the battlements, 
but on the very citadel of spiritual life. 

Heretofore, the experiments and discoveries of sci- 
ence have been confined to the sphere of ponderable 
and tangible matter; and many scientific men have 
doubted or denied the existence of other material, at 
least within the scope of human experiment. Theo- 
logical teachers, it is true, have often referred to 

* Delivered in Washington, January 1, 1865. 

(7) 



8 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

immaterial substance, to something that was nothing, 
and of somewhere that was nowhere; but scientific 
minds only regarded this as religious gammon, to be 
tolerated for its moral effect, or for its religious effect 
on the stupid, or mainly on the visionary and vivid 
imaginations of the victims of religious delusion. No 
truly scientific mind has given the least heed to the 
religious descriptions of heaven and hell, or of angels 
and demons, or of God and a devil, about which so 
many, learned and unlearned, with about equal knowl- 
edge, zeal, and authority, have preached and prayed for 
the last three or four hundred years. Some have pur- 
sued their studies and experiments without the least 
regard to religious theories, and without fear of God 
or devil (though they have often feared the wrath of 
priests), while others have found their experiments, 
when leading to the discovery of elemental or spiritual 
intelligent beings, have been at once stopped by the 
authority of clerical professors, who have had control of 
all the higher classes of schools in which experiments 
could be conveniently made, and of nearly all the 
scientific literature, as well as the reputation, of nearly 
every scientific writer, and most of the literary also, so 
that no book could find its way into the schools or into 
the hands of students which trenched upon the forbid- 
den ground of spiritual or elemental life. 

Theology asserted that God began in birth and 
ended in death each human being's existence here, 
for his own purposes. "The Lord giveth and the 
Lord taketh away, and blessed be the name of the 



EELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO- SCIENCE. 9 

Lord;'' and that it was not proper, if not wholly 
wicked, for man to make scientific, or, as many called 
it, sacrilegious, search after the souls before their entry 
upon, or after their exit from, this mortal life. No 
philosopher was allowed to erect a scientific telescope 
to reach the world of souls ; but hundreds of sectarian 
speculators, with wild and frantic vision, had ridicu- 
lous theories of a life beyond, in which they taught 
hundreds of absurd and imaginary conditions of exist- 
ence after death, and then all combined to prevent 
a practical and reliable discovery of the facts which 
would overthrow the false and establish the true, each 
evidently wanting faith in his theory, being the true, 
and fearing the overthrow of the whole, as is really at 
last the- case, in which spiritualism has made a clean 
sweep of all sectarian conditions of heaven and hell, as 
taught by Shaker or Mormon, Catholic or Protestant 
sect, and established a natural and progressive condi- 
tion of existence instead. 

But you ask, What are the facts, the scientific facts, 
which spiritualism has established, and must be here- 
after acknowledged in our literature and our schools, 
and which must produce such mighty results in reli- 
gion and ethics? First, we have fully and clearly 
demonstrated the existence of imponderable, intangi- 
ble, and so far as our instruments reach, uncontrollable 
matter. Second, that this matter is real and absolute 
in its existence, and in great abundance if not in 
great variety, but seemingly in great variety also, 
which may, however, arise from combination, as the 



10 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

various colors arise from combinations of the three 
simple and fundamental colors of red, yellow, and 
blue. Third, and most important of all, that this, or 
these subtile elements of absolute matter are capable 
of forming, or being formed into obganic bodies, and 
that BEINGS and things exist in great abundance all 
about us, whose forms and substance are entirely out 
of reach of oui^ physical senses, and the instruments 
we use in the laboratory of the chemist, and yet are 
within the reach of practical and demonstrative sci- 
entific experiment. Fourth, that the mentality, the 
intelligence, affection, aspiration, and passion displayed 
in human forms here for the brief space of life con- 
tinues its identity and conscious individuality after the 
death and dissolution of the earthy and ponderable 
body, in an organic form of living matter, with suitable 
garments, food, and material surroundings from that 
abundant sphere of elemental matter. Fifth, that this 
sphere of active elemental life occupies the region 
heretofore supposed to be void, or the waste land of 
the great creation, and also comes into the atmosphere 
of our earth, if not into the more apparently dense 
substances with which we have been dealing in our 
past experiments. 

We have thus carried forward the standard of sci- 
ence, and planted it in the domain of spiritual life, 
and already opened intellectual correspondence, if not 
commercial intercourse, with the beings who inhabit 
the ethereal realms, where science, under theological 
guidance and clerical professorships, has never been 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 11 

allowed to make experiments, or even put out tele- 
scopes or intellectual feelers. 

The school-rooms of our colleges and the sectarian 
halls of science are still confined to experiments with 
the bodies of the living or the dead subjects; the living 
the student may communicate with, and the dead he 
may dissect, but the soul, when once out of the body, 
he must never even ask for or inquire after, except of a 
priest who is as ignorant and usually more so than the 
inquirer, even though the latter be a child ; for creeds 
and religious doctrines have greatly tended to blind 
reason and stultify the better judgment that is quick- 
ened and sharpened by action on other subjects, but 
stultified on religious subjects by its efforts to believe 
unnatural, and unreasonable, and even ridiculous doc- 
trines. 

Our sciences have explored quite thoroughly the 
region of living and dead forms of earthy and ponder- 
able matter. We have many students of science who 
can tell by a bone or a scale, a skin or a tooth, a 
petrified form or a footprint, the animal origin, or 
owner of the relics ; and some priests, who claim to 
tell the pieces of wood that were a part of the cross on 
which Jesus was crucified, or the garments he wore, or 
the holy relics of saints and sacred things of ancient 
times, but not a wise one among them who can tell 
whether a message of intelligence from an invisible, 
intangible, and imponderable source comes from Daniel 
Webster, Thomas Paine, St. Paul, Indian Jim, Black 
Pompey, or Irish Bridget, all of whom have cast off 



12 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

their earthly bodies, and claim to be present in better 
and far preferable forms. Nor can they tell the source 
of sounds and motions that bring intelligence, and ever 
assert for themselves that they are spirits of deceased 
persons, still living in the elemental forms before re- 
ferred to. Nor can they tell us the origin of the intel- 
ligent power that guides a wholly inexperienced hand 
to draw or paint most exquisite pictures and like- 
nesses, and others attached to wholly incapacitated 
brains, to write most profound and correct essays and 
treatises, and others still, in conscious or unconscious 
utterance, to pronounce the most profound and philo- 
sophical discourses on subjects with which the speaker 
that gives out the sound is wholly unacquainted. But 
they can laugh, and sneer, and ridicule the subject 
which they dare not investigate. " They can spend days 
and weeks to decide why the cocks crow at midnight, 
or why the jackass brays more at one season of the 
year than another, or why the canary will not sing 
when moulting; but to inquire after the intelligence 
that so distinctly manifests itself and asserts that it is 
the living beings who have cast their mortal shells, and 
are living still in spirit life, is beneath the dignity of 
the learned professors of old Harvard and other col- 
leges of our nation. 

Well, shut, if you choose, the iron doors of your 
theology against us ; we have the key to the public 
mind and heart in our free speech and free press, and 
we can make our discovery known, and at last force the 
college and church to accept it, as they were compelled 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 13 

to accept other discoveries in astronomy, geology, anat- 
omy, &G. It is a slow and yet a sure process to make "^ 
discoveries outside the schools and halls of science, and 
then force their acceptance through the guard of sol- 
dier priests that stand at the entrance of every institu- 
tion of learning in the land, guarding it against any 
and every new discovery that might throw light on the 
origin or destiny of the human soul. 

It was a terrible, if not a horrible, innovation when 
astronomy settled the form and position of our earth, 
the sun, and some of the planets and fixed stars ; but 
priest and layman, professor and student, at last came 
to terms, and survived the shock ; and even theology 
survived it, and only added a few more absurdities to 
its already abundant list. Little did the preacher, or 
even the philosopher, then dream that the larger tele- 
scopes would reach out farther and farther, till the 
human mind should conceive no bounds to space, and 
no mathematical limit to the number of worlds, or 
even the systems of worlds, and thus bring in a new "" 
idea of Infinity and of God, boundless extent, number- 
less worlds and universes, and the insignificance of this 
of man, and all the narrow and ridiculous theories of 
creation and salvation, of heaven and hell, of the glories 
of God and misery of the devil. 

Astronomy did a great work in preparing the way 
for spiritualism. It opened the broad gate, and let us 
look out on the worlds in extent, and gave us some idea 
of the infinite region between the globes and systems 
which we now find to be occupied by invisible (to us) 
2 



14 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

forms, in a still finer and more joyful state of existence 
than ours, a spiritual realm of greater variety, beauty, 
order, and harmony than ours. But this comes more 
properly in another part of my subject, and may be 
passed for the present. 

Chemistry, next to astronomy, opened the eyes of 
many scientific men, and taking in anatomy, let out 
many truths from the laboratory, which encroached 
upon the theological domain like an army of invading 
soldiers, and carried away many of the hencoops and 
beehives of sectarian superstition and narrow preju- 
dice. She soon proved her instruments too short and 
too limited to reach the simple essences of matter, or to 
determine the number or variety of simples or com- 
pounds in the little world to which we belong, and 
falling infinitely short of reaching the vast unexplored 
region of ether, or the distant worlds. She dabbled 
a while in experiments to find the essence of life, or 
elixir vitse, and sought in vain for a philosopher's stone 
that should turn all metals to gold, and thus destroy 
its value ; but her pursuits in that field were like the 
Christian's search after God and a savior, and equally 
unproductive in general results, and yet in both cases 
making some useful progress for the race, and some 
practical discoveries in science and ethics, for which 
we are greatly obliged to each. 

Geology came next, thundering at the doors of the 
schools, which were closely bolted and well guarded 
with priests and holy books ; but she broke down all 
barriers and came in, sweeping away as a cobweb the 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 15 

chronology of the Christian, and the fables of creation ; 
setting her foot on the rock, swept away the word of 
ancient record in all its lines of history of times and 
modes of creation of earth, of animal, or of man. We 
are greatly indebted to Geology in the work she has 
done in preparing the way for the new discoveries of 
spiritualism. She has enabled us to begin at the rocky 
base of being, and build on her foundation our tower 
to the skies, and top it out in the more ethereal realms ^ 
of invisible matter. She has shown us that we cannot 
count the races that have " perished to pave the floor 
of lime " for man to tread upon ; that we cannot count 
the ages that life has been oozing out from the pores 
of mother earth to fit conditions for spiritual beings to 
dwell on the surface and in the air of our little world. 
She has taught us to respect the deserted bodies on 
which we tread of the beings whose vital spark may 
make up the living forms of to-day around us, and she 
has taught us the vastness and infinity of forms of ' 
being even on our little world, and pointed us prophet- 
ically to the probability of other worlds vastly larger, 
with larger, in proportion, varieties and ages of life, 
death, and fossil record, and made us long to go there 
and see the cabinets collected by their antiquarians and 
scientific societies. At least our discoveries lead us to 
believe it possible we may do so in some remote period 
of eternity. We can now see why our discovery is 
of so recent date, since the other discoveries were as 
necessary antecedents as the mastodon of the horse, 
the saurian of the monkey, and the monkey of man. 



16 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

They have all been paving the way for the higher in- 
tercourse and more beautiful forms of spirits from the 
ethereal realms. 

We have also been enabled in our experiments of 
late to establish the fact, that our spirit friends, whose 
subtile forms are beyond the reach of our hands or eyes, 
are sometimes able to momentarily clothe themselves or 
parts of their forms, such as hands, heads, &c., with 
the grosser particles that abound in our air, disinte- 
grated and disentangled from the forms they recently 
composed a part of, and during this momentary recov- 
ering of their spirit bands, or forms, to enable us to 
see and even touch them, and sometimes even to hear 
them speak to us, though usually in a whisper. The 
recent great abundance of matter thrown out into the 
air by the rapid decay of the victims of the war, has 
already supplied in greater abundance than before the 
necessary material, and such manifestations have ac- 
cordingly increased, and no doubt will much more for 
several years to come. There are many phenomenal 
facts we have in our list that we cannot yet explain 
upon any scientific basis yet established ; but we shall 
work at it till accomplished. 

These scientific discoveries, and the facts of modern 
spiritualism, by which we have opened an intellectual 
correspondence between the two spheres of being, takes 
the whole subject of life after death out of the hands 
of priests and superstitious bigots as effectually as 
geology does creation, and astronomy the position, 
forms, and motions of worlds. Hereafter spirit life 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 17 

will be in the domain of science, and the continued 
existence of our friends after we put their bodies in the 
ground, a demonstrated fact, which the success or fail- 
ure of some persons to communicate will not alter, 
since each case is subject to incidents, if not accidents, 
in which the will of both parties has a share, and the 
laws are such that many may not be able to comply. 
Some able and not willing, some willing and not able, 
and some lacking both ; and at least while the laws 
are so little understood, we may expect many fail- 
ures in individual cases and single efforts, and many 
accidental successes, as we now have, where the parties 
are utterly ignorant of the laws regulating the inter- 
course, and of course giving rise to scores of theories, 
many of them as ridiculous as those of our sectarian 
speculators. These are only the effect of newly-opened 
visions that " see men as trees walking." This is all 
to be expected at present from the speculative character 
and extravagant business education of our people, an 
instance of which may be seen in the overgrown and 
wild speculations that have recently followed the dis- 
coveries of Petroleum and its value, or in the visionary 
fortunes our unfortunate neighbors built on secession, 
separation, state rights, and perpetual slavery of the 
blacks. 

Man is constantly reminded of his shortsightedness 
and the weakness of his powers, especially in prophetic 
discovery, theoretic speculation, and extravagant ex- 
pectations. We are often brought down to the real 
basis of natural life, and to the practical demonstrations 
2* 



18 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

of science, and so shall we be in spirit intercourse, and 
upon that we can safely build our future hopes; 
/ We have now set up these facts : spirit life is elemental 
[life, elemental life is real life, real life is material, ma- 
I terial life is natural life, natural life is divine life, as 
much in one sphere of being as another, and couse- 
/ quently we have as much to do with God in this life as 
in any, and the laws of intercourse between the spheres 
are as legitimately open to our discovery and use as the 
\laws by which one nation holds intercourse with another 
whicltuses a different language. Hence priests are not 
necessary to intercede with God for us, nor to inform us 
of our relation to God ; and as they cannot give us any 
information of the souls or the soul world when these 
discoveries are fully known their occupation will be 
gone, and since they do not wish to change their base 
of supplies, we may expect they will oppose every move 
we make to get this discovery before the people, and 
hang on its imperfections with dogmatic tenacity, and 
beat back with prejudice every person they can, using 
religious authority in the church and professional 
authority in the school-room. But we are sure to 
conquer at last, as did astronomy and geology. These 
only drove them from their respective outposts, but we 
attack them in their citadel, and when driven from this 
they must surrender theology to science, and give us 
the region of spirit life to explore and experiment in 
and with. The walls of all their heavens and hells give 
way at once; the grave and the sea, death, heaven 
and hell give up their dead ; the great stone, which is 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 19 

the Bible, is rolled away from the sepulchre, and the 
guard of soldiers (priests) retire, and our friends walk 
out and greet us, and inform us they are not dead, 
nor sleeping, but only waiting till our eyes were opened 
by science to the laws of intercourse with them. Then 
they will prove 

"All houses in which men have lived and died 
Are haunted houses ; " 

that spirits unseen walk the earth and air with us by day 
and night, and though unseen by us, often see, and hear, 
and know what we are engaged in, and what most inter- 
ests us. Yes, my friends, the key to the spirit world is 
now in our possession, and we propose to use it till 
priestcraft gives way to scientific truth and practical 
demonstration. One great error long entertained by 
the learned and unlearned, is now removed, namely, 
that the subtile imponderable elements could not sup- 
port forms composed of themselves, and hence, that the 
soul, to live, must have its body of earthy matter resur- 
rected, and sleep till it was called forth, and that all life 
went out in death to be renewed only in the forms of 
grosser matter. Now we know this was an error, and 
that the finer substance produces finer forms, whether 
of greater or less durability we will hereafter prove if 
we can ; but we have proved their existence. 

My object in this lecture was to state the facts, not to 
produce the experiments or demonstrate my conclusions 
by exhibition ; but those of you who wish it, and dare 
it, can find the evidence, and remove your doubts ; then 



20 THE OIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

you will know as I know, that life is not confined to the 
body, nor dependent on its resurrection from the grave, 
and that the great gulf of ignorance is bridged over 
and the priestly guard removed so we can communicate 
with our friends, whose bodies are in the graveyards, 
and souls walking and talking in elemental life, near us, 
often waiting a word of recognition from us through 
their imperfect mode (as yet) of communication. 

But methinks I hear some materialistic mind in- 
quire how it is that we can prove the existence of per- 
sons or things we cannot see or feel, weigh or cut. 
We can prove the existence of mind although we can- 
not see or feel it, weigh or cut it. Proof of its 
existence does not prove its form or individuality. 
But intelligence is proved to exist in degrees of indi- 
viduality, and yet is not subject to scales or scalpel, 
and yet its very variety proves its individuality and 
personal identity. We do no more clearly, nor so 
clearly, prove our own human existence by our weight 
on the scales, our height on the wall, or the solidity of 
our bones, as we do by our mentaV^ capacity and indi- 
vidual intelligence ; as, for instance, I am as well 
known to persons who never saw or touched me as to 
many who have ; and to all of us are known persons we 
never lifted, or never saw, but who have made them- 
selves known to us by intellectual exhibition of powers 
and personality. Many Christians suppose they know 
Jesus and St. Paul, who never saw either, and probably 
never will ; and yet they would be shocked at me if 
I should ask them to prove such persons ever ex- 



EELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 21 

isted, or that they exist now, and yet I have evidence 
one hundred per cent, better than they have that my 
friends exist, some of whom I never saw, and some I 
did see while they lived in earthly bodies, and have not 
seen since. The Christian imagines he feels the pres- 
ence of God, or the Holy Ghost, in his religious meet- 
ings, and the church accepts it as true. We knoiv we 
carry on intelligent correspondence for hours in our 
language with our spirit friends, and the church denies 
and condemns it as a delusion of the devil. Two 
friends sit in their offices, many miles apart, and carry 
on for hours a real correspondence by telegraph, and 
no one doubts the fact nor denies the reality of either ; 
and yet what evidence has either of the presence or 
existence of the other, that we do not have of a spirit 
who raps or otherwise communicates to us ? When the 
simple red men first saw the white man and his ships, 
and heard his guns and terrific noise, they thought 
them superior beings ; but a short acquaintance soon 
proved we were mortal, and not any better than we 
should be at that, nor more honest than the natives, 
even though far more religious. Ignorance is the cradle 
of simplicity in both spheres ; hence our spirit friends, 
like us, have to learn the laws of intercourse as we do. 
A little Indian girl, after many years' residence in spirit 
life, gives her simple description of the steam engine as 
the buffalo with fire in him, and calls our military 
officers the big shiners, from the decorations of buttons, 
&c. In a thousand simple ways our "^friends from the 
invisible realm identify themselves, and at last estab- 



22 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

lish their personal and spiritual identity, and become 
messengers to us from the real and beautiful elemental 
world. 

The gradation of intellect there, as here, establishes 
individuality there as much as here. Our friends from 
that realm speak of flowers, and trees, and other objects, 
as being as real and material to them in that condition 
of life as they are to us here, or were to them when 
here with us. 

We certainly have as good evidence of the existence 
of forms, and colors, and substance, there, as we have 
of those we never see or feel here, by the testimony of 
living witnesses who identify themselves as the persons 
we knew here among us. 

The fact of spirit life and spirit intercourse cannot be 
much longer ignored by the ignorantly learned of our 
popular society ; but, no doubt, as they slowly admit it, 
they will for a time deny its utility. Such was the case 
with Franklin's and Fitch's discoveries of electricity 
and steam ; but now we cannot dispense with either, 
nor can some of us with spirit intercourse without 
great loss. 

Having now set forth the facts which most of you 
may know, as I know, that death is not the end of con- 
scious life and individual identity, but only the slipping 
off of the winter garments of coarse earthy matter, for 
a more light and beautiful spiritual body, in which 
we can walk and talk to each other, I leave you to 
seek and find the facts which are within the reach of 
most persons, to prove my statements true, while I 



EELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 23 

proceed in my next lecture to show the relation of our 
beautiful philosophy to Nature and her laws. If the 
learned professors of old Harvard College should ever 
make the report, promised so long ago, on spiritual 
phenomena, but which they have not yet dared to 
make, we may expect more testimony and evidence of 
what I have set forth here, since one of the faculty who 
promised it is now in the elemental world, and has sev- 
eral times communicated to this, and acknowledged his 
ignorance and prejudice, which controlled his action 
while here. We have now fully established the fact 
that we are intellectual individualities, and can, and do, 
recognize each other as much, and even more, by our 
mental status, qualities, and quantity of ideas, intellec- 
tual power, and social or religious character, as by the 
length of body or number of pounds we balance on 
the scales. We weigh and measure cattle and hogs 
for the market, but select men and women by other 
qualities of distinction, qualities that pertain to the 
soul, and can, and do, distinguish and identify them as 
much after they cast off the earthy body as before, 
and which we use in the same way to distinguish them 
among the multitudes in the immense regions of ele- 
mental life. In fact, we often know individuals in this 
life, whose forms, names, and localities, we can never 
find, as, for instance, the writer of the Junius letters, 
and the author of the Vestiges of Creation; yet we 
know they were persons, finite, mortal, mental, &c. ; 
but how many pounds each weighed, how many feet 
each measured, by what name each was called, and 



24 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

where each lived, we do not know, more than we do of 
the spirits whose communications we receive constantly, 
and as correctly bearing evidence of individuality, as 
these books do for their authors. Qualities that per- 
tain to the soul remain with the soul complete and in- 
tact after death, and enable us to identify our friends as 
well by them after as before death ; but to distinguish one 
tree or flower from another, we must bring its external 
form or particles to the senses, because it lacks the 
internal form or qualities to distinguish it from others, 
which intelligent beings possess, and carry with them 
out of their earthly bodies. Mental science and meta- 
physical philosophy will now take a new start, and 
occupy the ground we have discovered, and the inhab- 
itants of which we have opened correspondence with. 
Our schools and professors will shake off the authority 
of Bibles, the assumed wisdom of priests, and deal 
intelligently with friends in the spirit world, and we 
shall thus soon be rid of the vast amount of theologi- 
cal rubbish that is already dusted over and drying up 
in the family libraries of most intelligent persons of 
our country. Tons of old books on religious topics 
may be carried from every neighborhood to the paper 
makers, and be made over into clean paper for the 
new religious philosophy of the future. 

The inestimable value of these discoveries to the 
world cannot be overstated ; nor can we calculate now 
the results of these discoveries more than the speculative 
writers of Franklin's day could have foreseen telegraph- 
ing as a result of his discovery. The generations that rise 



EELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 25 

after us will rise over us, and build their works, on our 
discoveries, as we build on those of the past, and we 
may well estimate this as one of the best and greatest 
practical discoveries of the age in which we live, how- 
ever nauch the idle, the ignorant, the simple, and the 
superstitious may laugh and sneer at it. The self- 
righteous, with little real religion, rule now in our 
churches as they did in the Jewish church in the days 
of Jesus, and the self-wise, full of arrogance and 
egotism, rule in our schools, and often control students 
who really know more than themselves, and often 
despise those who could teach them in the departments 
they teach. 

A. J. Davis very truthfully and beautifully says in 
some of his works, that ideas are substance, and 
thoughts are the motions of ideas. This statement 
comes in very appropriately to sustain the new philoso- 
phy, as these ideas may be the pounds and inches to 
distinguish our friends from each other in spirit life, 
as measure and weight do beef cattle here ; and the 
motion, rapid or slack, of these ideas in thought, 
may serve to call our notice to " them, or enable us 
to pass them by. Or they may be the currency 
and pocket money of spirit life, and determine our 
riches or poverty there, as currency does here. It 
is well, at least, to have enough to jingle, if no more. 
We have had some messages from spirits who had little 
more than enough to jingle, and from others who had 
immense wealth of ideas; so we prove the rich and 
poor in ideas both go there and live in elemental 
3 



26 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

being.. In fact, we have all the evidence we need to 
prove the identity and continued existence of our fel- 
low-beings whose bodies have gone to decay; and 
surely no person can deny that as a scientific fact, if 
proved, it is new to science, for heretofore it has been 
only a matter of faith, hope, and belief, and confined 
to religion, and mainly to Christianity, which always 
ignored Science, and never allowed her unholy hands to 
meddle with spirit life or sacred things, which it as- 
sumed could only be revealed by God to man in his 
holy word, or by his inspired writers and speakers; hence 
the ignorance of preachers on scientific subjects. Ex- 
periments have long since given us the atomic theory 
of matter, but have also proved that by increased mag- 
nifying powers in us, any particle of matter can be 
divided eternally ; and although we have the power to 
trace each organic being to its starting point, in a 
single cell of most minute proportions, yet each such 
cell is relatively a globe, or world, to some being, for 
aught we know, as large and magnificent as our globe to 
us. Infinity knows no limits in either or any direction 
from us, or our capacity, and hence the argument that 
we cannot see, cannot weigh, cannot measure, is no 
argument against existence ; for of a truth we see and. 
feel but the merest atom, as it were, of beings and powers 
whose proportions to ours are as ours to the animalcule. 
Why then should there not be such? No one can 
answer, since there is space sufficient, and material in 
abundance ; and indeed, we begin at last to have some 
real and commensurate idea of infinity which knows no 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SCIENCE. 27 

bounds of time or space, or of variety and proportions, 
only the ever-clianging, ever-varying relation of objects 
to each other, and the rise and fall of worlds and lesser 
forms, some visible and tangible to some beings, and 
invisible and intangible to others, but all alike visible 
and tangible to the great Infinite Mind of the universe. 
Monads and mastodons, insects and human souls, in 
the realms of soul alike to the Infinite, and alike sub- 
ject to laws and relations of things. What a subject, 
and a new field for science, is opened by this setting 
forward the standard into the realm of spirit life, and 
opening it to research for human minds — sublime 
contemplation. mortal searcher after scales of 
extinct fishes, and footprints of dead birds, here is a 
new field open for you, where your soul may revel in 
Elysian discoveries that shall benefit the race far more 
in the future than all your discoveries of fossils and 
feathers, of skins and scales. Yet even these were not, 
and are not, to be despised ; they were, and are, impor- 
tant in their place and time ; but now there comes a rap- 
ping at the door of old Harvard, from the discoverers in 
another field of research; but as yet no one can be 
awakened in that or any other college, because the 
clergy are sentinels, and guarding the sleepers. True, 
Prof. Hare was aroused and awakened, and soon after 
he knew the fact of spirit life and intercourse he went 
over there to live, and left his old colleagues to grope 
on in darkness, and " totter on in blunders to the 
last ; " but thousands of the less learned and less wise, 
in their field of search, have obtained the great and 



28 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

glorious truth before them, fulfilling a scripture in 
part, that says, " hidden from the wise and prudent, 
and revealed to babes." So it has ever been with all 
great truths, and so we may expect for the present in 
this as in other discoveries of science. 



UECTXTKE II.* 

RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO NATURE 
AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 

I SHALL now open into a broader field, and leave the 
narrow limits of practical science, which deals only 
with facts, and the phenomena of its own production 
and explanation. 

Upon entering this Infinite Cathedral of Nature, for 
the examination of phenomena in corroboration of our 
spiritual philosophy, we shall at once perceive that we 
are not in the narrow laboratory of the chemist, nor 
confined to any limited experiments we can ourselves 
produce. The order, harmony, and beauty of nature's 
laws will at once show the superiority of the working 
power, and we shall be carried along in the currents of 
-phenomenal life, as motes in the currents of air, or 
sticks on the floating river. Forced into being, and 
held in existence as independent of our wills and vol- 
untary action, as if we had none, we shall find our- 
selves but living and intelligent atoms moved lapon, 
and moving in that divine power, which, Pope says, 

" Warms "in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent." 

* Delivered in Washington, January 8, 1865. 

Q * (29) 



30 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

And whether we have garments on our bodies, or 
bodies on our souls, we are alike in all spheres, subject 
to the same divine, general, and immutable laws of 
being, of change, and of development. Let us now 
begin our search after man, — a spirit, — and begin in 
the rocky crust, the mineral basis and looser surface 
of our little globe-world. His fossil form is not found 
in the crystallized, nor in the stratified rock. His 
face is not mirrored in the metallic veins, nor his foot- 
prints in the hardened sandstone of the early ages. 
No works of his art, or marks of his intelligence, are 
found buried and preserved with the bones of the 
saurian, or with the scales of the silurian fishes. Nor 
does the rock, the mineral, or the soil of the earth, as 
it is, yield to us the intelligence that distinguishes the 
human kingdom from all others. They evidently hold 
one subtile element, or force, as it is often called, if 
not more, that enters into the composition of man, 
viz., motion, which, by modern and recent discoveries, 
seems likely to be proven to be the parent and pro- 
ducer of attraction, repulsion, and cohesion, and, if so, 
will, no doubt, be-proved at last to be material — a 
subtile and potent element itself, pushing and pulling 
things round, whether worlds or atoms, with or with- 
out life, by its own general laws, and holding the rocks 
and soils in various degrees of tightened or slackened 
gripe. But motion, whether material or not, when 
added to, and working in, the rock or soil, will not 
produce man in physical or spiritual form. Hence 
we do not find him living in, nor produced by, these 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 31 

alone, even though we may find them as component 
parts of, and entering into, his earthly covering, and 
motion entering also into his soul. This basic matter 
of our earth evidently revolves in its own sphere, 
aggregating and segregating in forms and particles by 
the action and laws of motion, which, no doubt, played 
upon and through it in its nebulous and its liquid 
conditions which preceded its incrustation, and also 
in its first crystallized crust, its second stratified 
coat, so rent and broken by irruptions, and its looser 
garment of wash, and soil, and water surface ; but 
man, and soul, and individualized intelligence, is not 
to be found in any of those strata, or the forms they 
alone produce. Other ingredients are evidently neces- 
sary for his production, and we will step forward to 
another kingdom of matter, and search in it for the 
signs of being which distinguish us. We will next 
explore the vegetable kingdom, which exhibits a new 
principle, or element, in its entire and varied parts. 
In all its orders, genera, and species, life is apparent, 
raising its millions of heads out of the soil, and pulling 
them up into the air, yet holding fast by its root- 
anchors to the soil, or losing, in most cases, its life if 
the anchorage be broken. Motion in the mineral 
pulled the particles of rock and soil down into a level 
and smooth surface, but life in the plant and tree pulls 
the particles up and out, and extends the form sus- 
pended in air, pulling away from the rock, and point- 
ing to a higher sphere, and showing that while the 
tree may draw its food and growth from the earth to 
sustain its form, its life is as perfect in its outer and 



32 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

upper branches as in its trunk and roots, and that its 
blossoms and fruits are produced, not in the earth, or on 
its roots, but out in the air and on its branches. The 
general laws of vegetable life and growth are a great 
and beautiful study, and furnishing such variety, from 
the mosses to the pines, and from the cryptogamia to 
the multiflora, that a lifetime is too short to examine 
its specimens of form and beauty. But our search is 
after man. What tree or plant produces man ? What 
tree or plant produces intelligence? Where is the 
evidence of internal identity, or of external, if cut 
loose from the soil and water, and lifted into the 
upper air? Life departs and the form decays, and 
as there was no internal identity, the object is lost 
when the form is dissolved ; so dies and decays the tree 
of longest life, and the plant of shortest growth. The 
pine and cedar of centuries, and the mushroom of only 
an hour's growth, each comes and goes, and leaves no 
trace behind, following its flitting shadow out of exist- 
ence. Yet even these forms serve a great purpose in 
the order and arcana of nature. They incarnate the 
element of life, which does not enter into the rock. 
They hold it for a season; and in them it shows its 
tendency upward, and its kinship with the elemental 
spheres of being. It pulls away at the forms, but they 
are nearly akin to the earth, and it cannot carry them 
off to heaven. It comes down to kiss them, and makes 
them blossom and bear fruit, but it cannot hold their 
forms, and live on in them when loose from earth. This 
principle of lipe is, no doubt, material, a subtile fluid 
which no chemist can catch and bottle, but which is, by 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 33 

natural laws, bottled in every growing plant and tree, 
and whicli makes its first and lowest appearance on 
earth in this kingdom, which is nearest akin to 
the rocks, and yet distinct. We have many learned 
treatises on the laws and ways of life^ but few of them 
treat of it in the vegetable, where it is first and 
simplest in its manifestation, and most easily studied, 
because least complicated, and less entangled with 
other principles and elements. Some of its manifes- 
tations in this kingdom seem to counteract or con- 
flict with gravitation, as it takes particles of matter 
up from the earth, and lifts them high in air, by a 
silent yet secret pulling power that gently draws both 
liquids and solids to the tree top. It is evidently the 
power and working of life that does it, as the process 
ends and the pulleys break when life departs from the 
tree. But life, when once incarnated in earthly forms, 
although compelled to leave the single forms in which it 
was for a time active, does not seem to depart from the 
earth, or diminish in quantity or power, but rather to 
increase in quantity and power, from its first in- 
ception in the cryptogamia, which crept out of the 
Silurian basins of tepid water, in the earlier ages of 
earthly creation, long before the Jewish Jehovah be- 
gan his six days' labor, or any other personal God had 
visited our little world, for then no rural virgins were 
here for them to become enamoured of, and no Jewish 
temples to be dedicated, or bloody battle fields for them 
to participate in. All was quiet and still, save the 
surge of waters and moan of winds, when life was 



34 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

born on earth and " entered the baby forms of plants." 
Long after this, the monstrous growth of the carbon- 
iferous era and the giant trees of California embodied 
the active and truant element, and it became a princi- 
pal ingredient in the earthly forms. But I must pass 
from this beautiful theme, on which my mind loves 
to dwell, to the next grand step in the creative march 
of Nature, and our search after man and his soul life. 

The animal kingdom comes next in order, more 
complete and compact in its forms, in date and rude- 
ness parallel with the vegetable. Starting in the Silu- 
rian era, its simple radiata were able, in most cases, to 
cut loose from the anchorage of the plants, and retain 
life in their forms, with locomotion by which they 
could, in later and better orders and genera, roam the 
earth, swim in the water, and sail in the air. They 
had motion, life, and locomotion ; and as their forms 
became more complicated, and developed a spinal col- 
umn and network of nerves, another element crept in at 
some stage or period of growth and form, not yet fixed 
by the experiments of science. Sensation is that next 
and higher element not found in plants, nor distinctly 
in the three first orders of animals, but prominent 
and abundant in the. vertebrate. But even this may be 
shut out of them, and life continue, and the forms 
move : locomotion, too, may be suspended, or never 
attained, and life remain its full period. Yet the dis- 
tinctive chara^cteristics of this kingdom are locomotion 
and sensation. Their forms, too, like the plant, draw 
up, and absorb, and carry off the solid particles of 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 35 

matter by other laws than those of gravitation. The 
complicated machinery of the animal organisms is won- 
derful to behold and highly interesting to study ; but 
the attributes of man are not more to be found here 
than the attributes of animal in the plant. There is 
still another gulf, another bridge to be erected, or 
pontoon to be laid for us to cross to the next kingdom. 
We search in vain for science, for mathematics, for 
intelligence and reason in the animal kingdom, except 
the reflected intelligence of some domesticated animals, 
and the psychological action and reflex of men and 
spirits on dogs, horses, birds, &c. True, the animal 
works by instinct ; but instinct is from without, and not 
from within, leaving the animal as a circumstance, or 
controlled by external influences and powers, and not 
by internal. The bird builds her nest not from a pat- 
tern, but without, and by the same law and power that 
her own bones and feathers are made for riding on the 
air, or the fish for the water. The honey-bee makes its 
perfect hexagou cell not from mathematical rule or cal- 
culation, but by and from the same law and power 
that it is made of the neuter gender, and armed with 
its sting for its work and defence ; and it sweeps the 
air and follows its straight line home by the law of 
instinct, or outer general and diffused intelligence, 
working out the general laws of mother Nature in and 
through her children. No aspiration or veneration is 
found in the animal. Imitation is found, but it is not 
an evidence of intelligence more than the twirl of the 
vine and leaning of the climber to the stake set for it 



SQ THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

to hold to as it pushes into the air. We have never 
found that any animal leaned to and looked for another 
life after the death of the body. They cling with 
pertinent tenacity to this, even under very unfavor- 
able circumstances; so do we when ignorant of our 
future, and may also when aware of it, for aught I 
yet know. 

Many persons who become attached to pet cats, dogs, 
horses, birds, or even pigs, are not willing to lose 
them at death, and hence try to hold on to a belief 
that these too will go over to the spirit life, and be with 
them there ; but, if so, the law must be general, and as 
we scald out the bedbugs, and burn the fleas, we only 
send them on to torment our friends on the other side ; 
the cocks, too, whose heads we wring off here will 
crow again at midnight and break of day, in the spirit 
world, and the old saurian and mastodon will be drag- 
ging about their slimy length in that sunny land. But 
I have not found the evidence of soul life in animal 
forms as yet ; and, by theology and scieiKje, before spir- 
itualism, could not find it in man, for my faith was not 
strong enough to bring it into birth by any miracle or 
supernatural agency. 

Sensation is evidently a subtile and material element 
as well as. life and motion, and abounds in our world 
as they do, playing in animal forms, and like life in 
plants, leaving them and uniting in again forming- 
others. When life and sensation leave the horse, life re- 
news in the worms that feed on its carcass ; but, if sen- 
sation returns, it is in feeble expression, and hardly to be 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 37 

detected at all in the insect. Thus far in oar pursuit 
and search after soul and soul life, we find motion 
in the mineral does not furnish it, that life in the 
vegetable does not furnish it, and that locomotion 
and sensation in the animal do not furnish it. Hence, 
in searching in these three kingdoms, we find each re- 
volving on its own axis, and returning in its own 
material sphere the principles or elements temporarily 
incarnated or incarcerated in each form, to be freed 
again at death, and enter new and other similar or 
dissimilar forms ; each element of the lower reappear- 
ing and entering into the higher kingdom, and each new 
element giving higher type and broader scope, greater 
variety, broader base, and wider range to its kingdom, 
and with the two last pointing to, but failing to reach, 
the elemental form of organic being, and live out of, 
and independent of, the earth and its solids. Rocks 
roll down hill ; trees root and grow up into air ; ani- 
mals cut loose and roam about in air and water, but 
keep hold on earth for food and sustenance, and cannot, 
as we know, live without it; nor, as we know, do they 
ever dream or desire beyond it a life or being. They 
seem of the earth earthy, and entirely content with 
this sphere of being ; at least so our experiments thus 
far prove. So we need not expect the barking dog, the 
biting fox, the humpbacked camel, and the kicking 
jack, nor even the alborak of Mahomet, to report in 
the spirit world whatever likeness of them may be indi- 
genous to that sphere, while we let the honey-bee 
return to liis hive by instinct, the dog to his kennel, 
4 



38 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

the ox to his stall, and the ass to his master's crib, while 
we advance to the next kingdom of earthly beings, and, 
still exploring in search of soul, see what we can find in 
the Human. 

This kingdom rises from and above the animal as the 
vegetable rises above and from the mineral, and cuts 
loose from its physical body and earthly food as the ani- 
mal cuts loose from the anchorage of trees and plants, 
and lives without earthly food as animals without roots 
in the earth. Of man's origin I will not treat here, as 
that is a question that has no bearing on my present 
subject, and will not make " one hair white or black," 
nor add a feather's weight to my argument for the 
spiritual destiny of our race. We find several distinct 
races wide apart in condition, as we do of animals, but 
only five or six, or perhaps seven, of them in all ; but 
all have the distinctive marks of the kingdom Homo. 
In another lecture I may show the peculiar and dis- 
tinctive characteristics of each and all. But for my 
present purpose I want them all in a family, to fur- 
nish the root of soul and soul life. There is at least 
one additional element in this kingdom, — Mind. 
And it seems individualized before it enters and 
after it leaves the earthly form or shell, which 
seems to serve as a burr or husk for the soul for 
and during its sojourn in the earthly matter. What 
mind is has long been a mooted question ; but that it 
is, has, I believe, never been questioned since the days 
of the wise men of Greece. Other elements enter into 
the human composition, which may or may not be found 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 39 

in other kingdoms ; as, for instance, Love^ now ascer- 
tained to be a material element, and to abound largely 
in the human kingdom. It may or it may not be found 
in animal and even vegetable forms. If it is the cause 
of sexual passion, and the sole cause, it can be traced 
in plants and largely in animals. If it is the sole cause 
of maternal attachment, it will be found to abound in 
portions of the animal, and not in the vegetable, by any 
such exhibition. But if it have only that broader scope 
which we give it as we find it in the human soul, ran- 
ging from devotional love of God to the love of flowers 
and colors, rendering them all more or less sacred, it 
may be found only in the beings who have souls, and 
may belong to tha soul realm only ; but as its material- 
ity lias been but recently asserted, we are not yet 
ready to decide what is and what is not to be attrib- 
uted to it among the phenomena of our world. It is 
very doubtful whether the sexual passion is at all 
attributable to love ; some other cause may cover the 
whole of these phenomena, and still it may belong to 
the soul as well as the body. 

Of one thing we are at least sure, namely, that God 
is not love, and love is not God, in our world at least, as. 
it now is. Mind is the great distinguishing feature of 
the human kingdom, and bears it on to a superior 
sphere, where it can realize and receive its proper 
aliment and element. It is true that in some of the 
lower races and individual specimens of each race, we 
need a microscope of great magnifying power to dis- 
cover it, and are almost as much at a loss as we are to 



40 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

find sensation in the animals without nerves, or life in 
some of the lower plants of cellular tissue ; but, as 
each grand feature of a kingdom is its distinguishing 
property, and the human is mind exhibiting in the 
aggregate intelligence of high order, we must take in 
also the extremes, even though some be very feeble. 
Mind makes each individual, and ^he race, a centre 
from which intelligence radiates ; from some so weak 
it can scarcely be discovered, and from others in great 
splendor ; yet each evidently has a spark, however 
dim, which may kindle in time to a flame. There is 
much evidence furnished us by nature that man is only 
planted in this sphere as seed in the ground, to sprout 
and shoot out into the elemental or spiritual life for his 
real growth ; or that this life is at best but a gestation 
of the soul, which is really born when it breaks out of 
its clay tenement into the light of spirit life. 

Man is never contented here, neither with riches nor 
power. " Nothing charms which we attain." " Never 
is, but always to be, blest." Our minds are forever 
stretching out feelers after something the body does not 
need and cannot use. None of this is seen in the king- 
doms below ours, but it is so general in ours as to be 
counted universal as a characteristic of the race. 
Nature is ever true to herself. ^' Want is the garner 
of our bounteous Sire, and hunger the promise of its 
own supply ; " but the supply is not here, is not on or of 
the earth. We have a hunger no bread can supply, not 
even the fabled manna sent down to us. We must go 
up and pluck it, and eat it there. Man is not of the 



ITS EELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 41 

earth earthy, but a spirit spiritually minded, and as 
a spirit he must be fed and sustained in a spiritual 
life. 

No wonder the rich king Solomon, with his temple 
and hundreds of wives, cried, "All is vanity and vexation 
of spirit." No wonder Alexander sighed for another 
world to conquer. No wonder a Nero could not satisfy 
his cruel heart with its sacrifice of life. The soul of 
man is not at home here ; this is not its sphere. The 
tree pulls up from the earth, and stretches its form in 
air. The animal cuts loose, and roams over its surface, 
eats and sleeps, and is satisfied with his home ; but 
man cuts loose from earth, and finds his home in 
the skies — in a finer element, where more order, har- 
mony, beauty, and love, and ample time, awaits his 
enjoyment of his powers. True, some human speci- 
mens can scarcely be said to show signs of soul while 
here ; some are so wholly sensual as to exhibit but little 
more of mind or soul than the brutes ; yet we can find 
causes for their want of soul-powers, and our charities 
cover the deficiency, while the general character of the 
race gives us evidence that all will be saved who 
have the human form, even though it be but partially 
developed here. What the elements are that constitute 
the spiritual form that outlives the body, we cannot 
yet decide ; we are at present too much engaged in 
rejoicing over the recent discovery of soul and soul life 
to go minutely into its composition. The anatomy of 
the soul may yet be a study, and other professorships 

than clerical may be given out for that purpose. We 
4* 



42 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

have been too busy searching out the homes of our 
spirit friends in the upper air, and beyond in the infi- 
nite regions of elements, to dissect as yet their forms, 
even if we could do it. The stratified condition of our 
world is well known. The crystallized rock, with its 
minerals ; the stratified or sedimentary rock, with its 
myriads of fossils ; the loosened particles of alluvial and 
diluvial soils, with their living roots and creeping ani- 
mals ; the watery element, with its fishy tribes ; the 
atmosphere, with its floating songsters and walking 
forms, each a little higher than the last and the step be- 
low. Why should the chain of being break here ? Is 
the power short, or material short ? There is certainly 
room enough and time enough, and if the Infinite arm 
is not short, or material exhausted, we may look for 
another stratum, another and more ethereal life, a 
region of superior existence near us and our atmos- 
phere, yet above our bodily senses; and even though we 
may not catch its living beings in nets, as we do fishes 
and birds in water and air, yet they may be as real, and 
have even more of life and enjoyment. Compare a 
fossil with a bird, a fish with a butterfly, an alligator 
with the beautiful form of a lady in the most refined 
society, then ask yourself if there may not be another 
contrast with a form as much superior to the finest 
human as that is to the alligator or the rock fossil, and 
you will find in the answer a spirit such as are now 
communicating with us under the laws of spirit inter- 
course. Would you ask for the evidence that such a 
sphere contains the mortals ^rom this ; that these germs 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 43 

in gestation of soul are the real inhabitants of that 
world of being ? Behold the tree rising from the seed 
in the soil, and the corn from its covered germs ; be- 
hold the butterfly rising from his chrysalis shell and 
creeping form to soar away on wings ; or look at the 
little wiggler in the barrel of rain water, and see it rise 
to the surface upon its new wings and soar away to file 
its bill, and prepare to bore you as it sings its mosquito 
song in the evening. Scores of other testimony nature 
furnishes, if we needed it, to establish our point, and 
make a home for the soul of man in the ethereal realms 
that surround our earth and atmosphere. That region 
is almost infinitely greater than all parts of the earth 
and atmosphere, and we may infer from it and our 
spiritual nature and desires, that our lives and time, 
numbers and variety, are proportionably greater and 
longer. Hence it is often called the eternal life, the 
endless existence, the immortal sphere, &c. ; but of its 
duration or end, either in time or space, we have no 
assurance or authority ; I leave that to be settled here- 
after, fully satisfied if I establish its real and material 
existence, and open an intellectual intercourse with it, 
and between ourselves and its inhabitants. This, 1 
know, has been accomplished ; and my efibrts now are 
to induce such action and efforts in others as shall 
enable them also to knoiu the truth ; and this I could 
easily accomplish but for the mighty wall of prejudice 
that sectarian bigotry and religious superstition have 
built up around the minds of persons to keep out free 
thought and investigation. 



44 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

Science has taught us to follow the growth of being 
here from the single and simple germinal cell to the 
complicated forms of man and beast. She has made us 
well acquainted with the first stage of human existence, 
or its first gestation (for man has two) ; but she has 
not yet given us much reliable information on the 
second and most important one, the gestation of soul in 
its mortal body, and its preparation for the higher birth. 
The point, however, is settled, that souls are born into 
the higher life as bodies are born into this, with a much 
greater proportion of premature births, and greatly in- 
creased by our conflicts and antagonisms ; but we are 
assured that premature births do not cut off being there, 
nor send back the soul to earthly body again to be 
reborn and ripened to maturity of age and manhood, 
but rather that the spirit grows in that life, and attains 
its man and womanhood with some loss of earthly 
experience and want of contrast,- if not of development. 
Even this double gestation is not wholly new in nature, 
for it is shadowed forth in several instances, as in the 
bird, which has first a germinal existence in the egg 
before its separation from the body of the female, and 
next its incubation, which may be as properly termed 
its gestation, or more so than the growth of the egg ; 
and there may be quite a period between the two births 
of the bird during which it is suspended in embryo, and 
awaiting its birth into its life and element. So of 
some souls which linger here in feeble bodies till the 
worn-out shells nearly drop off or dry up and leave it 
clinging to earth, like some plants which can hardly 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 45 

be killed by uprooting and overturning. As some 
plants yield their life readily and easily, and others hold 
it under almost any change, so some bodies and souls 
part easily, and others cling with the tenacity of weeds, 
and some animals, as cats, for instance, which are said 
to have several lives, or some species of tortoise, whose 
heads will bite and bodies crawl several days after they 
are separated ; but none of these varieties of life or 
differences in birth prevent the final appearance of the 
soul in its realm of spirit life, and however stupid it 
may seem while in its decayed or feeble body, it rises 
in quickened and renewed life on entering the spirit 
sphere, and breathing the elemental atmosphere of 
that world. 

When we have once established the real existence 
of the next stage of being, and proved our title of in- 
heritance there, and found our departed friends already 
enjoying that superior state of existence, our minds 
will naturally reach oii and after still another. 

Having passed the great gulf of death, and escaped 
from the tomb, we will inquire if there is not another 
death and another life, or if the next after this is the 
last and highest sphere of our or any existence. I know 
and feel the tendency of the human mind to this in- 
quiry, but I cannot answer. " Further this deponent 
saith not." For the present I will try to be content 
with establishing a sure claim for the race to a life and 
sphere where the mortal yearning of the soul may be 
met, and it§ love mated, its thirst for knowledge satisfied, 
and its desire for truth gratified. If you are not content 



46 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

with this, I will aid in pushing your knowledge and 
inquiries into this sphere, and you may from that, 
and its knowledge or theories, explore as much farther 
as you can ; but I am sure that in this knowledge of 
the next sphere, as the real home of mortals, and the 
real life of the soul, we have a richer treasure of 
knowledge than mortals have before possessed. And I 
am indeed proud to be able to find in Nature the evi- 
dence of man's rightful inheritance of a spiritual life, 
and not be obliged to turn to any of the old fables of 
^sop or Jesus, or the speculations of Pythagoras or 
Plato. 

Modern science settles the fact of spiritual existence, 
and nature furnishes man's title to it as his legitimate 
inheritance, and one that no fabled war in heaven, nor 
any theological confiscation, can deprive him of. Hence 
we are all safe, and the fallen race has arisen to new 
life, and Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Ethan Allen, 
and even Abner Kneeland, are enjoying their large 
estates in that better world, instead of being in torment, 
suffering from the wrath of an offended priesthood or 
its angry God. Nature and her laws have taken care of 
them and all others, and will of us, for her provision is 
ample for all our needs, and she cannot be robbed of 
her territory or her stores, nor can we of our share in 
them. Look up then, mortals, and be glad. Lift 
up your hearts and rejoice, for there is a higher and 
better world before you, and you are sure of being born 
into it with heirship, and inheritance such as you need 
and deserve. The dead world is beneath our feet, 



ITS EELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 47 

the clumsy forms of living matter are about us, and the 
bright and light, elastic forms of the spiritual world 
are above us ; we are walking on the one, feeding on 
the next, and preparing for the other ; and soon shall 
all be gathered into the bright and living realm of 
spirit life. The faith, hope, and belief of the Christian 
is needed no longer ; they may have served as beacon 
lights to some, and as the ig-nis fatuus to others, lead- 
ing the former to a haven of rest, and the latter into 
the swamps and quagmires of superstition, bigotry, or 
fanaticism ; but now none need apply them, or appeal 
to them more, for the light and intelligence of that 
world has dawned on this, and he that hath ears to 
hear can hear, and he that hath eyes to see can see, 
and whoso hath understanding can understand. This 
new and glorious era of spiritualism which has dawned 
on our age, will open the eyes of the blind, and unstop 
the ears of the deaf, till there need not be an infidel or 
a bigot in the enlightened world. Rock, Soil, Water, 
Air, Elements — grade above grade of matter. Min- 
eral, Vegetable, Animal, Human, Spiritual — grade 
above grade of being, each rising into the next, with 
the Human forming the base of the spiritual, and sup- 
plying it with individualities. Where is the mystery 
or the marvel that it should be so ? Is it unreasonable 
that this longing of the human soul should be realized 
and met, when there are time and room enough, and 
material is not wanting ? If so, then goodness is lacking 
in God or Nature. If we are to be tantalized with the 
desire for a higher sphere, and never realize it, there 



48 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

is surely some injustice and wrong in our Creator, if 
we have a Creator. No wonder some minds who dis- 
believed in a sequel to our life here denied an intelli- 
gent cause of our being, and attributed our world and 
existence to chance, for if this life were all we have 
of existence, it is not jonlj a failure, but a crime, to 
start us into being with such powers as we possess, and 
blow us out at death unsatisfied even with the longest 
life that any get here. No wonder so many with this 
belief have cursed God for bringing them into a mis- 
erable and unsatisfactory existence here. But when 
this beautiful philosophy dawns upon such minds, they 
turn, with hearts, full to overflowing, of thanks and 
gratitude to the Giver of life here as a basis and 
entrance upon being for the sphere above. 

I can well imagine the queries of many minds in 
regard to the elemental world or spiritual life, for such, 
to a great extent, were mine at an earlier day in this 
philosophy, — such as, do we eat ? what is our food 
there ? do we sleep in that life ? do we dress, and what are 
our garments made of? do we walk, and ride, and dance, 
and sing ? or do we grow and decay, get old and feeble ? 
&c., &c. We are not ready to answer all these ques- 
tions so soon after discovering and opening intercourse 
with that sphere ; yet there is no doubt a natural and 
appropriate supply of suitable matter for the growth 
of bodies there, that do not attain it here, even if not 
of others ; and whether spirits do really eat from 
necessity to support existence, as we do to support life 
here, or only for pleasure, and from a desire to gratify 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 49 

an appetite and love of food, I cannot determine from 
the present testimony, and have not deemed it as yet 
essential to know ; yet there is no doubt of a fitness 
and adaptation of food to the spiritual body if neces- 
sary at all, and if not necessary, I am sure some of us 
will not trouble the cooks nor waste much time on 
fine dinners or dry crusts, as some of us in our great 
variety will have satisfactory experience of both while 
her^. As to sleep, it is a serious question whether the 
soul is not awake when the body is asleep, and 
already beginning its experiences and acquaintances in 
that life while a denizen of this. But whether so or 
not, it would not answer the question of sleep in that 
sphere ; nor will I answer it, but leave it for each of you 
to ask your spirit friends when you find yourselves in 
correspondence with them, and desire to know. I 
seldom think of such questions when I have opportu- 
nities of conversation with those who live there ; and 
when I do, and ask, they assure me that there is such a con- 
trast between their world and ours, that a direct answer 
would often mislead the mind of the inquirer, and 
hence they seldom give it. As to garments, the testi- 
mony of clairvoyants and of spirits is, that they are 
appropriately robed in that life with material and 
adaptation far superior to any we have here, and that it 
is abundant, and left to all to fit and decorate them- 
selves ; that servants are scarce, and slaves wholly 
unknown, and that no wolves are found in sheep's 
clothing, and no rich dresses on corrupt and miserable 
bodies, but each wears an appropriate robe, and changes 
5 



50 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. ' 

according to conditions and company, business and 
circumstances. Having thus presented to you the dis- 
creted degrees of being from tlie rock to the soul, and 
the grade to which we belong, and shown, that Na- 
ture not only furnishes the evidence, but the fact of 
spiritual existence and a continued life for us, I leave 
each of you to search where I have found the complete 
demonstration of these most essential truths, and by 
which you can so use and regulate your lives here as 
to secure the greatest advantage there from the ex- 
perience here, which you will, no doubt, often find, as I 
have, is not the course, in all respects, that is marked 
out and set up as the highest standard of morals or 
religion, by the popular institutions of this world, and 
often may lead you to disregard the old rules of propriety 
that have become sacred only from age and long use, 
but which are not in accordance with Nature or her 
laws ; but you will with this knowledge, each of you, 
seek to so robe yourselves with kindness, charity, and 
love, that you will have many friends in that sphere 
who will gladly welcome you to that life, and ever try 
to increase your happiness as you have tried to increase 
the happiness of others. Nature and her laws will be 
more sacred to you than the laws of man, and where 
they conflict, and you can consistently do it, you will 
follow the former or higher law ; as, for instance, in a 
state where slavery or polygamy exists by law of man, 
both being unnatural and in conflict with the highest 
interest of the race, you would avoid both, and choose 
rather to be unable to own a slave, than to be the 



ITS RELATION TO NATURE AND PHILOSOPHY. 51 

owner of one, and choose rather to have no wife, 
than have more than one, and not even one, ex- 
cept as an equal in all social and personal rights, as 
Nature teaches the wife should be. Thus live here to 
make others happy, and " live to love, that you may 
love to live." Hoping this law will be as clear to you 
as it is to me, good night. 



LECTTJUE III.* 

RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO RELIGION, 
ESPECIALLY TO CHRISTIANITY. 

The following lines, by R. W. Emerson, entitled 
" Brahma," may serve as my text for this evening. 

" If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 
They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep and pass and turn again. 

Far or forgot to me is near ; 

Shadow and sunlight are the same ; 
The vanished gods to me appear ; 

And one to me are shame and fame. 

They reckon ill who leave me out ; 

When me they fly, I am the wings ; 
I am the doubter and the doubt. 

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 

The strong gods pine for my abode. 
And pine in vain the sacred seven ; 

But thou, meek lover of the good, 

Find me, and turn thy back on heaven." 

I may as well begin this lecture with prayer, since 
prayer is considered an essential part of the religious 

* Delivered in Washington, January 15, I860. 

(52) 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 53 

esercises of most persons and churches. There are 
four modes of praying, besides the more common and 
general one of preying on our fellow-beings. The first 
is not now, if it ever was, practised in our country, but 
is still in use in some of the older nations of the East. 
It is praying by machinery, by a wheel sometimes, as 
the missionaries inform us, turned by water, and some- 
times by hand, grinding out prayers for the penitent or 
applicant person or family in quantity proportioned to 
the pay and the exigency of the case. This mode of 
devotion, for those who are not able to do their own 
praying, is no doubt as effectual with the heathen gods 
as any, and might answer as well as much of the Chris- 
tian praying in heathen countries, and save much mind 
work ; this mode is quite like organ grinding of sacred 
music. 

The second mode of prayer is much used in our coun- 
try, and by some of our most respectable families ; but 
it is near akin to machine praying. It is a form of 
reading prayers, sometimes in a dead language and 
sometimes in our own, with a repeat of the same after 
the priest. 

These prayers are not as original as the sounds of 
the machine, for they are prepared by others and re- 
peated by us on the various occasions for which they 
were adapted by their authors ; and if we suppose they 
move God to action in behalf of the penitent or patient, 
I await the evidence, as it has not yet been furnished. 
This mode of prayer is fast going out of use, except 
with those who have not the time or the ability to 
5* 



54 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

make their own prayers. This, like the first, is usually 
performed by a priest for the applicant, especially on 
occasions of birth, marriage, or death, or severe sick- 
ness in the family which adopts this mode of prayer. 

The third form of prayer is also largely used in this 
country, and is a little improvement on the others. It 
is a wordy, and often noisy and windy voluntary and 
spontaneous flow of words and strange sounds, in which 
the praying person often assumes some strange or pecu- 
liar attitude of body, and uses uncommon words, 
sounds, and phrases, as if these would arrest or attract 
the attention of God, and bring him to answer or receive 
favorably the petition. To these also I have yet to 
learn that any answer comes, and especially to the long 
ones in churches, so plainly condemned by Jesus. I 
am quite sure they are never answered except as the 
man got answer for rain, by praying for it when he saw 
the shower coming. The only value I have ever placed 
on any of these modes of prayer is a personal discipline 
of the praying party. God seems equally deaf to them 
all, and the Holy Ghost out of hearing. This kind is 
not as generally performed by the priest, yet offen 
thrown upon him, or accepted as his duty, for the peni- 
tent and supplicant, when he is near and can perform 
it ; and, especially on extraordinary occasions, he i^ 
often called to do such at marriages and deaths, when 
he is expected to do his best, and to tell God all the 
news, and tell him he knows all about it, does just what 
he pleases, and just right. 

The fourth mode of prayer is also extensively used 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 55 

in this country, and more since the war than ever be- 
fore, and is the one mostly adopted by spiritualists, and 
I believe will be in general use among them before 
long. It is to DO the prayer in deeds of kindness and 
charity to the needy, and feel that inasmuch as we deal 
out blessings to those around us, we are blessed by 
God. It is to carry the bread and water, the garments 
and the comforts to the needy, instead of getting a priest 
to carry our petitions to God for help for the suffering, 
or uttering only words or sounds. Do your prayers, 
my friends, and you will be heard of God, for " actions 
speak louder than words ; " then in prayers, at least, 
we*will count you a spiritualist. I could tell many 
stories of answers to such prayers, but none to the 
others, and to those not from God, but man — answers 
that pay, some an hundred fold in this world, and far 
more in the next. Thus we have the machine prayer 
of the pagan, the book prayer of the Catholic, the wordy 
prayer of the Methodist, and the charity prayer of the 
spiritualist ; and here I dismiss the subject, and pro- 
ceed to examine the religions and their Gods, briefly 
but pointedly. 

For the sake of convenience I will divide the wor- 
shippers into three grand divisions, and leave for each 
several subdivisions, only a few of which I can even 
refer to here for want of time. 

Since all men are by nature religious, all classes and 
races will be included in my divisions, for all are wor- 
shippers in some way. All human (and no other) skulls 
have veneration, which is not only the religious base, 



56 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

but may be a soul base also, for soul begins where ven- 
eration begins, — in the organic structure. 

The first and largest grand division of the race is 
Pagan, and their religion, idolatry in its first and sim- 
plest meaning, for in the broadest sense of idolatry a 
large share of Christians are included ; but in this appli- 
cation it refers only to those who worship things and 
objects that can be seen and handled, — gods that come 
within the reach of the senses, — or gods which are in- 
cased in images or incarnated in animals or persons. 
This vast multitude of idol worshippers are, no doubt, 
as honest in their devotions as the more advanced Chris- 
tians, and not more deserving of hell for their simple 
religion than for their ignorance. It is, no doubt, fully 
up to their capacities, and the long and persistent 
efibrts of Christian missionaries have proved that the 
best they can do for them while thus unenlightened, 
is to change the idol of their devotion from one object 
to another ; sometimes substituting the Bible for some 
wooden image, or other idol, but not thereby elevating 
or enlightening the mind to the reception of higher 
truths. 

This is the religious childhood of the race, and like 
the childhood of individuals, has its dolls, and tops, and 
rocking-horses, which are sacred, at that age, as the real 
babies and horses are to ripened man and womanhood. 
Not only is their religion necessary, but the idols also, 
and it betrays a weak mind and great ignorance to 
attribute wickedness or attach the wrath of God to this 
devotion of the weak and undeveloped ; and, although 



, ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 57 

the Jews made it an excuse, themselves no better, for 
wars, and even for slaughter and extermination, yet 
the very course pursued by them, and some Christian 
nations, has proved the depravity of their hearts, and 
the wickedness of their actions. So far as the quality 
of goodness is concerned, or honesty and sincerity are 
apparent, the pagan is evidently fully equal to the 
Christian ; but, in point of intelligence, and extension 
and expansion of mind, he is greatly inferior. For any 
God to be angry with or hate such people for their 
false religion, or even to blame them, it would be like 
a father or mother punishing or offended at his or her 
child of a few weeks old, for what it had inherited from 
them, and the feeble display of its infantile powers. 
In that rude, weak, and crude state of society, no other 
or higher religion can be appreciated ; and hence it is 
right and proper to cultivate, at that stage of mental 
and spiritual growth, the devotional feelings, and draw 
them out by wooden or animal gods, as we cultivate the 
maternal feeling in little girls with dolls, and the war- 
like in boys (in an age of war) with wooden swords 
and tin guns. 

This grand division of human worshippers seldom 
have ideas reaching out of this life in connection with 
their rewards and punishments. Some of them have a 
theory of. the transmigration of souls, or lives, and 
others fix the blessings in posterity and prosperity, and 
the punishment in sickness, and barrenness, and adver* 
sity. As this is the first grade of human society and 
religion, it corresponds to the fossil rock, bearing small 



68 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

evidence of the spiritual life of man that is in embryo 
within, and which begins to crop out in the next and 
first layer of Christianity. For Christianity is the sec- 
ond grand division, and holds partially attached to 
itself, as a fungus growth, Mohammedanism, which does 
not properly belong to Pagan or Christian order, but is 
like the ichthyosaurus, a sort of fish lizard, and has 
only a temporary and short race, even though its sword 
was for a time quite noted among the nations of earth. 
For the illustration of my subject I do not need this 
monstrous growth of religious fungus, neither its 
prophet, its alborak, its houris, or its harem-heaven. 
Some of the Christians, with their multitude of sects 
and doctrines, will furnish me variety enough for my 
purpose. Christianity, modern and proper, has little 
or nothing to do with the original and simple teaching, 
or the religion of Jesus and his followers, and there- 
fore I leave them out as the rapping and healing 
mediums of a rude and simple people, in an age- and 
country of ignorance and superstition. 

The great and grand religious division of Christianity 
has something magnificent, sublime, and at the same 
time ridiculous. Its first and largest sectarian grade 
and division is the Roman Catholic, which drags its 
slimy length out of paganism, with many holy relics 
and sacred things still attached to it. Its feet still in 
paganism, it stretches forth its hand, and lays hold of 
an imaginary altar in the spirit realm, and moves one 
foot slowly forward to step on the purgatorial middle 
ground of a spiritual world, which to it, however, is only 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 59 

imaginary, as it has no reality or materiality to it, and 
is located nowhere, as well as made of nothing; but in 
this latter respect it is fully and truly Christian, as their 
whole catalogue (except the little band of Sweden- 
borgians) of heavens and hells are only imaginary, and 
all made of nothing and located nowhere, as well as 
the Catholic purgatory. Catholicism, with its holy 
water, holy wafers, holy images, and sacred bones and 
relics of saints, and garments and crosses, &c., draws in 
a large amount of paganism, and still holds the upper 
grade of pagans and the lower grade of Christians, but 
forms the first or basement story of Christianity, and 
begins to pull the devotion out of images as life pulls 
trees out of the soil, and sends it forward to an ideal 
and imaginary realm of continued existence after death. 
This is the great and distinguishing feature of Chris- 
tianity, that while resting on fables, miracles, and won- 
derful stories, it stretches out and projects the imagina- 
tion into the ideal realm, and fills it with gods, angels, 
and devils, thrones, and principalities and powers, kings 
and kingdoms, servants and sycophants, and every con- 
ceivable condition of existence, from a burning hell to 
a frozen heaven, from a Turkish harem to a sylvan her- 
mit, and from a king of kings to a servant of servants, 
but all in bondage to decrees and arbitrary authority, 
of which each sect is its own exponent, from the abso- 
lute authority of the pope's sovereignty to the popular 
sovereignty of the Universalist, and the immutable 
laws of the Unitarian. So far as religious devotion is 
concerned, the Christian is not more honest or more 



60 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

religious or devotional than the pagan ; but his mind 
is much more expanded, and as he begins to feel 
into or see into the other life, he sees " men as trees 
walking." 

His devotion is based mainly on the fear of pun- 
ishment or hope of reward, as the pagan's is, and is 
really but little better. But his expanded mind could 
not put up with images and objects of sense, and 
hence supplied by imagination the multitude of objects 
and conditions, and dealt out to favorites or enemies 
its rewards and punishments from and in an imaginary 
world, which, whatever the reality of spirit life might 
be, had no reality to them, as is fully proved by the 
reception they give to the demonstrations and commu- 
nications of spiritualism. 

In the aggregate, and as a distinguishing feature of 
Christianity, they have moved the idols and the re- 
wards and punishments to a fabled and imaginary 
realm of being, which they have pictured from the 
figures and fables of the ancients, and from their own 
prolific and fruitful fancies, of reward and punishments 
in a life to come, for devotion and belief, or neglect and 
unbelief, in this. They have greatly multiplied in sects, 
and built up societies, churches, priesthoods, bishoprics, 
and seminaries in great proficiency, and have pressed for- 
ward their religion with the strong arm of law and the 
sword where they could control them, and with fables 
and fiction where it would advance the cause, as in the 
writings of Milton and Watts, and the Holy Wars and 
Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan, and many others, which 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 61 

go to seed and scatter, like thistle blooms in the tracts 
of our day, and often take root and obstruct reason in 
the youthful mind, as the thistle does in the field of 
the farmer, to the detriment of his crops. The wars 
and missionary schemes of Spain in South and Central 
America are a fair instance of the ruin and destruction 
of an innocent and ignorant race, and the French and 
English missionaries among our northern Indians, who 
could not bear or resist the '' fire water " or the passions 
of the whites, are also fair illustrations of putting new 
wine into old bottles and new patches on old garments. 
But perhaps the most complete ruin, and evidence 
of missionary folly, corruption, and wickedness, is to 
be found in the history of the Sandwich Islands, where 
innocence has gone and ignorance remains, and crimes 
and diseases before unknown are now rapidly destroying 
that harmless and once innocent race. The great power 
and value of Christianity is not in saving souls, for in 
this it is a complete failure, according to its own show- 
ing and testimony ; but it is in its stretch of the mind 
in carrying forward the imagination to the ideal realm. 
In its ability to hold out an unseen God and unseen 
life, unseen spheres and conditions of being, in reward 
and punishment, while playing on the feelings of the 
people, holding them in check and control by their 
imaginary visions, threats, and promises, it moved the 
altar over the deep channel of death, and planting its 
standards there, played on the feelings and imaginations 
of its fanatical believers. It required faith, gave 
HOPE, and demanded belief in its hundreds of con- 
6 



62 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

flicting and contradictory creeds, each advocate assum- 
ing his to be the right, the true, and the God-given 
one, and all drew these doctrines of every shade and 
hue from the same infallible, perfect, and holy Bible. 
In numbers they fall far short of the pagan ; but they 
control the world by intellect, and are, of course, as 
their religion implies, far in advance of the pagan in 
intellectual development, and being more active, com- 
petitive and enterprising, are less harmonious than 
the pagan nations. They are cruel, bloodthirsty, and 
warlike, and while preaching peace are constantly prac- 
tising war, and while teaching forgiveness are the most 
unforgiving beings on earth. With the lower classes 
and less developed intellect among them, their Bible 
has a sort of idol sacredness, and is held as a perfect 
and holy thing, with all its falsehoods and errors of 
translation, which they never see or know, and cannot 
believe till their minds are expanded. 

But in their God the Christians have completed and 
ended idolatry, for they have adopted the most perfect 
form that the human mind can conceive of — the 
human form — beyond which it cannot go, taking a 
living human being from the historic names, have en- 
dowed him with divine attributes, or incarnated their 
ideal God in him, and carrying him over or through 
death, have set him up in their kingdom of heaven 
to receive the love of Christians here, and the praise 
and adoration forever, after death, of all who believe 
on him, and have a name written in his book of life 
while they live here. It is a cunning and artful 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 63 

scheme, and has taken in millions of ignorant and 
innocent followers, whose eyes were only opened to 
the truth by a change of spheres. But all this was, 
and is, vastly superior to that worship of " images 
made with hands," or of beasts and, vegetables en- 
dowed by priests with great and sacred powers to 
bestow blessings or inflict punishment on the truant 
mortals who disregarded the priests' commands. 

But one of the greatest and most egregious errors 
or blunders of our Christian teachers and writers is, 
to attribute the enlightened and partially civilized 
condition of a portion of the race to the Christian 
religion, when this is wholly dependent on the enlight- 
ened and half civilized state of society for its introduc- 
tion and existence, and it always conforms to the 
social and intellectual condition of every community 
for the peculiar phase it takes, as in New England and 
some other parts of the United States, it goes up to 
Unitarianism, Universalism, and Congregationalism. 
In Ireland and Germany, it is Catholicism ; in Eng- 
land and parts of the United States, Methodism ; but 
even these sects are widely different in different social 
conditions of society, as, for instance, in Alabama, 
Methodism supports negro slavery, but in New Eng- 
land it is, even with Methodists, the " sum of all 
villanies." 

No one sect represents Christianity, but all sects ; 
and the aggregate record-doctrine and practice must be 
taken as the standard, for they stretch along the whole 
distance from paganism to spiritualism, terminating in 



64 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

the extreme branches, or most liberal sects, which blos- 
som out in the United States, and send forth shoots, 
as in Parker and Emerson, and others, into pantheism, 
rationalism, transcendentalism, &c. 

Christianity, as a religion, has ever been a supersti- 
tion, battling against science, philosophy, and reason, 
perverting nature, and trying to overturn it as totally 
depraved. No wonder she opposed reason and science, 
for they would expose her errors and fables, and 
advance the mind and condition above Christianity, 
to which they hold the same relation as pagan idols to 
them. The great number of sects has tended to 
neutralize the power of each and advance the whole, 
and has been a great blessing to some nations in the 
last century, especially in the United States. In some 
of their controversies, they have been nearly like the 
Kilkenny cats, devouring each other in all but their 
tails. They have, at least to impartial readers or 
hearers, used up and completely extinguished, each 
the authority and doctrine of the other ; and yet both, 
entering new ground, have kept on, and kept up 
meetings, made converts, and pretended to save souls. 
But it was really little else than insuring, for a price, 
against imaginary fire in the life to come. 

If we ask them the road to hell, it is down, if to 
heaven, it is up ; and yet we are on the surface of a 
round ball, whirling in space, with complicated and 
compound motion, and with ether all around us, and 
stars (worlds) in every and all directions, and with 
no up or down. But then they do not mean, geograph- 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 65 

ically or geometrically, up and down, for, in fact, 
heaven is nowhere, and hell ditto, and then they mean 
in grade, or degree, a sort of sliding-scale in being 
which leads one way to a bottomless pit, and the other 
to glory ; but they are at once terribly shocked if we 
show them that a few steps on that scale set us out 
of conscious being, and into rocks or atomic existence, 
in which no hell will burn, and no torment reach us. 
Ah ! God can fix it so as to torment you, infidel and 
unbeliever. So can the pagan's God do it for the 
Christian thief and robber, as they term them. After 
all, it is all good in its place, right and proper for 
the conditions of human growth. Without childhood, 
manhood could not come, nor spirit life follow. The 
race is displaying its boyhood and sowing its wild oats 
in^Christianity. It will reach its manhood in the next 
phase,_which is already beginning to dawn in the rude 
features of spiritualism. There is a strange and mys- 
terious complexity of Christianity in uniting the Jeho- 
vah of the Jews with the Jesus of Nazareth, or in 
trying to unite Judaism with Christianity proper, and 
call it all one, as in the bound volume, containing a 
large part of the Jewish scripts, and a small part of the 
early Christian writings, and calling it the inspired 
word of God, and all else apocryphal. 

The early sectarian founders of Christianity were 
luiscrupulous, and sought only to build up their reli- 
gion at any sacrifice of principle ; and they had an 
ignorant and stupid generation to labor in and on, 
and succeeded well with them. At that time, those 
6* 



66 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

who could would not expose the frauds, and but 
few could; and, indeed, for that matter, it has con- 
tinued so ever since, so far as the books are concerned ; 
but for the last century, Christianity has not depended 
so much on its books and authority as on agitation and 
on excitement of the feelings in what it calls revivals 
of religion. These have often swept over towns and 
villages like tornadoes, and sometimes extended over 
large districts of territory, and carried off captive, for 
a short time, a large share of the young and excitable 
portion of the inhabitants ; but since these are known 
to be subject to natural laws, as absolute and regular 
as the laws of storms, they are not so frequent, nor so 
terribly destructive of common sense, of decency, and 
good order. It is interesting to listen to some learned 
divine in a sermon, setting up Christianity, and claim- 
ing for it all the advantages and benefits of science and 
art, literature and social reform, and then learn that 
he represents only one of near six hundred sects that 
dates back only three or four hundred years ; and then 
we hardly know how to excuse him, whether on the 
ground of ignorance or prejudice, as we find the facts 
to be, that all he and his religion are is attributable 
to what we have of mental development, and depend 
on it, instead of it on religion. Let no one suppose I 
would detract from or depreciate Christianity. I have 
no such object or wish. I have no prejudice against it 
to gratify. I would give even " the devil his due." 
But I do not, and cannot, be honest and true to my- 
self, to my knowledge and my conscience, and set it 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 67 

up above nature, or science, or intellect, or even pan- 
theism. 

I have tried to be just and then generous, and to 
look at it from every side, and its hundreds of head- 
ings, and to hold it responsible in the aggregate, and 
not in sects ; and in this view it certainly only presents 
us with its idol God, if a personal one, and its ima- 
ginary conditions of existence, because they are no- 
where^ and nothing, and, of course, cannot be heard 
from save in the ear of faith, nor seen except with the 
eye of faith ; yet since it pulls us out mentally from the 
material rubbish of temples, idols, and holy places, and 
stretches our fancy beyond the bounds of earth life, 
and death, it prepares us for that next and higher 
development in religion which is to rest on a scientific 
basis, on natural law, and the perfection of human 
nature. A "religion of manhood" will succeed Chris- 
tianity, which will be to it, in exposing its errors, mis- 
takes, and follies, what Christianity is to paganism and 
the lower forms of idolatry. It certainly is only a 
higher form of idolatry to have a God in human form, 
instead of the form of a crocodile or lamb ; and it does 
not remove the worship beyond idolatry, in the abso- 
lute sense, to make the God of invisible matter, and set 
him on a throne, just out of sight of mortal eyes. But 
the better and more advanced portion of Christians, for 
the last few centuries, have left out the Jewish Jeho- 
vah, and diffused the Christ Spirit, so as to escape idol- 
atry, having outgrown it, even in its highest sense. 
But there is still work for Christian, and even pagan. 



68 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

and much yet remains for Catholic and Methodist, 
before even Unitarianism and Universalism can become 
the religion of Christianity. The orthodox fossils are 
drying up, and were it not for their control of the 
schools, their power in our country would soon depart, 
and the people demand a higher and better religion. 
Inheriting as we do from our Christian mothers, nursing 
with our first food, and receiving with our first rudi- 
ments of education, Christianity, it is not strange 
it should be to us so sacred, and hold us in such firm 
and fearful reverence, especially in early life. But as 
intellect ripens and age advances, we grow stronger, 
and often overcome the early errors imbibed in our 
childhood. 

Preachers have long seen the necessity of supplying 
the ranks in the churches from the children, and hence 
the efibrts to keep up Sunday schools, and Bible classes, 
and revivals for the young. They seldom convert a 
person that escapes till thirty or forty years of age. 

But I must pass to the next and last great grand 
division of the race in religion. 

Spiritualism, which is no less than religious phi- 
losophy, and philosophical religion, setting aside faith, 
hope, and belief, approaches through science the com- 
plete demonstration of a spirit life, and makes it a 
practical, real, and material existence, and, opening com- 
munication with it, deposits its treasures and affections 
there for future use. It has no idol God more there 
than here, and no wrath to appease, no sacrifice to make, 
needs no atonement, has no holy books and places, no 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 69 

more sacredness on words than on actions; accepts 
no old foolish fable of creation, but relies on science, 
nature, and reason, for its history ; learns the past, un- 
derstands the present, and gets living testimony for the 
future life from those now in it. It is the religion of 
manhood, the age of reason, the philosophical age. 
But you may say it has not come yet — no, but it is 
dawning upon us, it is rapping at our windows, it is 
entering our temples, and at twelve years of age is 
confounding the learned D. D.'s at every meeting. It 
is already felt as a mighty power in our nation, and 
theology trembles in its churches and colleges, for it 
cannot meet it. The cry of infidelity is potent no 
longer against it ; to deny it is useless, and only betrays 
the ignorance of the one who denies it. The devil, as 
an explanation, is only a subject of ridicule, even with 
the ignorant, for few people now fear the devil, since he 
has beeii shown to be used only as a scarecrow so long. 
There is one way, only one, to stop its spread and con- 
trol of the world, and that is to stop education, science, 
and civilization, and then the race can be rolled back 
into superstition and darkness ; but if we go on, as go 
on we will, then surely we go out of Christianity into 
spiritualism. 

The ideal and imaginary world gives way to the real 
spirit life, and old scripts, claimed as God-inspired, give 
way to the living and present inspiration, from a supe- 
rior sphere which we can understand and depend upon. 
Ancient fables lose their sacredness, and modern 
messages we receive as coming from finite and imper- 



70 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

feet beings like ourselves, and needing, in our appli- 
cation and use, the exercise of our reason and judg- 
ment. God is Law, and Law is God. Nature, perfect 
and supreme, and we her children, born in ignorance, 
to be educated in wisdom, to feel and know our growth, 
and have ample compensation for our efforts and trials, 
and struggles in life. Religion shall no longer consist 
in sacrifice, neither of goats and lambs, of doves, or 
herbs, nor of one seventh of the time when all is 
equally holy, nor in torturing the body with scourges 
or bended knees, nor in senseless words of jargon- 
prayer, or windy sermons of useless praise, nor in 
holy houses with ridiculous fronts and spires, nor 
sacramental feasts or fasts, nor in holy or unholy bap- 
tism and christening, nor in fear or faith,' belief or 
Bible reading, but in works, good works among men ; 
deeds of charity, kindness, and love, love to man since 
it is needed here, and not by God, can do good here, 
and none there. 'Tis the dawning of that age of virtue 
which a brother (Stearns) has so beautifully portrayed 
in a series of articles in the Banner of Light. It needs 
now no prophetic eye to behold it coming, no charmed 
ear to hear it knocking at the door. The dawn 
of millennial day is breaking at last ; but poor 
Miller has gone, and his followers are scattered and de- 
luded with the expectation of a fiery ordeal, and a God 
in the clouds, but it comes in a natural way, and is a 
new era in the world's history, a new religious phase of 
society. Not that all will see or feel it, for as Chris- 
tianity has never raised all out of paganism, nor 



ITS RELATION TO EELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 71 

lifted half the race out of it in two thousand years, 
so we may expect the tardy nations, who are slow to 
learn wisdom, to remain in Christianity for a long 
time yet, but the potency of the spirit world in this 
great work will greatly enhance and aid the change. 
Hence we have already, in twenty years, more converts 
than Christianity had in four hundred years, and more 
influence to-day in our nation than any one sect of 
Christians in the land. The proud and haughty pagan 
laughs and sneers at the Christian, and really thinks 
him a fool or a knave, and the proud and haughty 
Christian does the same for the same reasons, and from 
the same relative position, at the spiritualist; but the 
world moves, the day dawns, and the light spreads. 
But let no person mistake me, and suppose I claim that 
each medium is a spiritualist. By no means : many of ^ 
our best test mediums know little or nothing of spirit- 
ualism, and some are members of churches, and read 
or say prayers in their places ; nor is every one who gets 
tests or messages from spirits a spiritualist ; but there 
are many with, and of, and in the true spiritualism, who 
are not mediums, and never had a test or a message 
from the unseen world. It is a condition of intellectual 
and spiritual development attained by some through 
the aid of mediumship, or messages, and by some in, 
natural and religious growth ; the latter often after 
going through Christianity and its churches, and some 
after preaching it for many years. "When I am rightly 
and fairly understood you will find most of the objec- 
tions to my position fall to the ground, since I claim 



72 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

only what really belongs to spiritualism by condition, 
but without regard to the standards of Christianity, 
either of morals or religion, for both are only adapted 
to their age and condition. Nature is our true and 
pure standard, and holds each sphere and person to 
the line of accountability and duty in each and every 
department of her kingdom of life — a religion whose 
God is Law (not man-made statutes, for such are not 
Law), whose prayers are deeds of charity, whose devo- 
tion is love, whose gospel is good works, and each 
member a preacher. Each person with a knowledge of 
life after death, lives for that life, and fits the soul in 
this for its home in the next ; and each friend, as he or 
she escapes from the body, brings a word or message 
back to the loved ones here, to assure them of his or 
her safe arrival on the bright shore of eternal life in 
safety. Then the struggles and conflicts for wealth 
and power in this world will cease, for the pursuits 
of the richer treasures beyond will be attainable with- 
out impoverishing any one here. Then man will 
know that the next world will not furnish a place of 
torment for his enemies, nor allow of revenge being 
gratified that was engendered on earth. I can even 
now/eeZ the smile of contempt that curls on the lip of 
the bigot at my description of the spiritualism of the 
future. I know the Bull of the Pope is out against it, 
but so it was against Luther's heresy ; but it could not 
be stopped, neither can this. Say what you please, do 
all you can, your Bibles will get dusty, and the large 
old volumes will be sold for paper makers to work 



ITS RELATION TO RELIGION — TO CHRISTIANITY. 73 

over into new clean sheets for mediums to write com- 
munications from spirits on to the living. Their 
sacredness has already departed from many a house- 
hold, and will from many more before this century 
ends. The new corn will not put on the old ears' 
husk, nor will the new religion take your old books 
or ceremonies. 

Some persons, it is true, slip out of the old by de- 
grees, and hold for a season to some ceremonies, or for 
a time still feel a sacredness in their Bible, and find it 
good authority for spiritualism, and plenty of evidence 
there of mediumship and communion ; but soon the 
priest comes and assures him or her it is a perversion 
of Scripture, and declares Moses and the Prophets are 
on his side, and we may as well let them have it, for 
with these, and visits from the dead also, they do not 
believe, as it was said they would not. 

Blessed is every one that has a part in this new 
resurrection and life, this new gospel of life unto life. 
The windows of heaven are truly opened in our day, 
and angels are ascending and descending to and from 
among us, and blessed is every one that lets them into 
his windows, and holds converse with them. The path- 
way of progression is now open to all who seek the king- 
dom of heaven, and no sectarian bigot can bar it more 
against the sons and daughters of men. The great 
and glorious era has come in our day, and we may well 
rejoice in its dawn, and its light, for already it brightens 
and shows the signs of a glory surpassing all past ages 
and conditions of mankind. 
7 



LECTTJIiE IV.* 

RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 

Having traversed the domains of science, philosophy, 
and religion, we now enter the field of politics and gov- 
ernment, to search for a fit condition, or to establish 
one for the age and epoch of spiritualism, and the in- 
tercourse of spirits with mortals. 

In the lowest grade of human life, in the. earlier ages 
of the race, and in the lowest races of the present day, 
man has no government more just or righteous than 
that of some animal species. The coarsest food in its 
crude state satisfies his appetite, as it does the animal. 
The same rude shelter of rocks and forests, and snows 
and glaciers, protects him. The same tyrannical law of 
force rules the weak in the strong. Nature makes her 
physical and muscular distinctions before she does her 
mental, and man first uses the physical to rule and to 
ruin, and afterwards uses the mental and intellectual 
in the same way, as is daily evinced in our state of 
antagonistic society and Christian religion. Long after 
that, in the moral and spiritual age, shall come the age 
and rule of justice, virtue, equity, and rights. Barba- 
rism shall give way to intellect, the physical to the 

* Delivered in Washington, January 22, 1865. 

(74) 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 75 

mental, as it has in the enlightened portions of the 
earth ; and after that the intellect shall give way to the . 
moral and spiritual nature; then comes the "age of 
virtue," of justice, goodness, and truth. But this is 
evidently in this world only for the progressive por- 
tions of the race. What may be the fate of the others '' 
in the next I know not ; but we have the record and the 
living evidence here that of the six or seven distinct 
races, only one has yet shown the capacity of itself to 
enter into the highest state of political, social, and reli- 
gious life, and that has not yet done it, except in a few 
individual instances of persons, families, and societies, 
even if these have. Any close and impartial student of 
physiology will soon be satisfied of the distinct species 
of human beings, and of the distinct origins also of the 
races, which cannot be perpetuated in the hybrid, or 
equally mixed parts ; and he will also be satisfied, not- 
withstanding the odiousness of miscegenation, that in , 
all mixing of species, the one absorbs and terminates 
the other, unless some social or other barrier keeps up 
a distinction by which each race maintains its own dis- 
tinct propagation, as in the Malay and the Esquimaux, 
the negro in Africa, and the giants of Patagonia^ which 
latter, however, are supposed to belong to the species of 
the common American Indian, and to be slowly expiring 
with him. This philosophy of the distinct human 
species is perhaps extraneous matter, and out of place 
in this lecture ; but I have but incidentally alluded to 
it, and will state here, once for all, that I do not con- •/ 
sider it as furnishing the slightest pretext for slavery, 



76 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

although it has been used as one of its defensive argu- 
ments since the scientific and historic discovery of a 
real and permanent distinction of human species, and 
the scientific truth has met much bitter opposition 
on that account, in which a portion of the anti-slavery 
writers and speakers have joined the Bible defenders 
of the Adamic origin of the race, and the mud history 
of origin in the creation of the first man,^and the rib 
history of the first woman, and the origin in these of 
all the races, black, white, red, &c. This opposition will 
now soon cease, and Science triumph, as she ever does 
sooner or later, in every controversy with Religion, and 
ever will till Religion builds on her facts its towering 
structure, which may then reach the skies. History 
and science will both prove that if two races, or species 
of the human race (if the term suit better), are mixed 
in one government on equal terms, or unequal terms, 
of freedom and competition, the stronger and more 
progressive will soon absorb and exterminate the 
weaker. The Esquimaux (a distinct species) seeks 
his snow den in the polar regions, out of reach of the 
native Indian, or is devoured by mixture on the border 
of the Indian's range in British America. But even 
with his seal-hunting and ice-roaming capacity, he is 
evidently failing, and will soon disappear from the 
earth and the species of human beings. As a race 
or species he cannot be enlightened, cannot be edu- 
cated, cannot receive or use science or philosophy, and 
hence in the renovated earth must disappear from its 
surface ; but what or where his destiny I know not, but 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 77 

suppose in the infinite region of elemental space there is 
a place and time for each desire to be realized if he has 
any that are not satisfied here. His government and 
religion are both of the lowest, rudest, and simplest, 
and his earth life but little above the animals of the 
frozen regions he inhabits. 

I need not go off our continent for evidence for my 
present purpose, but will take the Indian next, em- 
bracing all the tribes from Patagonia to Labrador, which 
are evidently of one species, and do not devour each 
other by mixing in the law of generation. They have a 
government and religion peculiar to themselves, both 
simple and quite natural ; their religion not inferior in 
goodness and truth to the Christian, but, from its sim- 
plicity and purity, unsuitable for the intellectual age 
of enterprise and speculation. It was not sufficiently 
complicated to draw out and expand the mind as 
Christianity does. The Indian can be enlightened, but 
he cannot be civilized. He can be educated to some 
extent, but he will not invent nor use science, or phi- 
losophy. He will not speculate, carry on commercial 
intercourse, nor build cities, towns, or towers. He will 
not support law or gospel, and his food, his domestic 
and social relations, are simple and rude, and in every 
condition of life attained he will make a pack-horse and 
servant of woman because she is the weakest, and finer 
in body and mind, and he cannot appreciate her qual- 
ities. The Caucasian is rapidly crowding him off this 
continent, or absorbing him by miscegenation ; and as 
he has no snow banks to flee to, where he can live out 
7* 



78 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

of our reach, his only chance to be perpetuated is by 
being swallowed up in the blood and bones of the 
stronger Caucasian race, which is being effected in the 
few colonies where our government has tried to save the 
remnants of some tribes, and to socialize them and 
make citizens of them. I have met them in the school 
and legislative hall on equal terms, and seen them in 
our armies ; but in a few years their faces will be seen 
and their voices will be heard no more among our 
descendants forever, for they will be lost, as the river 
is lost in the sea, or the lesser stream in the greater. 
But I know they have a place in the spirit world, for 
many of them have reported to us from that life, 
and they are among our best friends and truest 
guardians, and their sphere seems quite near to ours, 
as they are often the first and most ready visitants in 
our family circles, and among our best health-restoring 
guardians and healing angels. 

This noble race, with its physical life absorbed in 
ours, and its athletic forms seen no more on earth, and 
its spirit home so near as to visit and guide us, will, 
no doubt, have filled out its mission on earth ; and, 
however we may regret its departure, it seems fixed in 
fate that its earthly end should soon be reached, and 
no human hand can stay it. But since we know it has 
fixed a permanent lodgment on the spirit shore, we do 
not feel its loss here so deeply as if it could only live 
in history. It is useless to complain of the white man's 
aggression and cruel wars and persecutions. He has 
used the Indian no worse than he uses his own species, 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 79 

exterminating and robbing, when he can, nations and 
families of his own kin, and dooming to endless misery 
a large share of his own household, by his unnatural 
social and religious systems. The Caucasian, in his 
enlightened stage, is the cannibal and self-devouring 
being; and well may he be expected to devour his 
neighbors who are weaker. 

Let the red man go home to his fairer hunting 
grounds, where he will be crowded and robbed no more ; 
for he cannot develop the resources of the earth ; he 
cannot use the sciences, nor bask in philosophy ; he 
can fight, but he cannot cheat ; he can steal, but he 
cannot rob ; he can swim, but he cannot sail ; he can 
talk, but he cannot telegraph ; he can trade, but he 
cannot weave; he can twist, but he cannot spin; he 
can shoot, but he cannot load ; he can hide, but he 
cannot lie ; he can sleep, but he cannot dream ; he can 
cook, but he cannot clean ; he cai> make trails, but he 
cannot make roads ; he can make canoes, but he can- 
not make steamboats ; he can make wigwams, but he 
cannot make churches (especially with steeples) ; ho 
can make baskets, but he cannot make wagons ; he can 
make arrows, but he cannot make muskets ; he can 
raise maize, but he cannot raise wheat ; he can raise 
babies, but he cannot raise slaves; he can raise the 
the sick, but he cannot raise the dead ; he can raise the 
wind, but he cannot raise the devil — therefore, in the 
long run, he is beat, outwinded, and exterminated, for 
the Caucasian, with his government and religion, can 
raise everything, from a bean to a baby, and from a 



80 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

lie to a war ; and what it lacks in the real, it will make 
lip in fiction and imagination, and press it on the young 
and ignorant as real. The Indian could never receive 
Christianity. All the missionary schemes have been 
complete failures with him. Scarcely a family has been 
even " hopefully converted." We might lay all our 
schemes of salvation before him ; he could not see the 
point. To him it was unnatural, and inconsistent 
with his simple and natural idea of the great Father 
Spirit ; for his 

" untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind : 
His soul proud science never taught to stray 
Far as the solar walk or milky way ; 
Yet simple nature to his hope has given 
Behmd the cloud-topped hill a humbler heaven, — 
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, 
Some happier island in the watery waste, 
Where slaves once more their native land behold, 
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. 
To be contents his natural desire j 
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire ; 
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
His faithful dog shall bear him company." 

In government the Indian cannot rise to the written 
codes of constitutional and statute law, to legislative en- 
actments and legal jurisprudence. In religion he can- 
not rise to competitive and destructive Christianity, its 
resurrections, its fall, and atonements, its creeds, and 
doctrines of salvation and damnation. Their govern- 
ment and religion were both simple and natural, and 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 81 

well adapted to the life and development they attained 
here. More, very much more, might be said of them, 
and more to their praise than dispraise; but I pass 
them now, with a thousand thanks for the kind visits 
and messages I have received from them and their 
spirit homes. 

What I have said of the Indian will only apply in 
part to the negro. He is an entirely distinct species 
from Indian and Caucasian, and with an equal right 
to the earth and to liberty, he has qualities widely dif- 
fering from both. In his native African home he has 
not attained as advanced condition of government or 
religion as the Indian. Associated with the Caucasian, 
he goes farther and lives longer. As America is evi- 
dently an older continent than Africa, so the negro is 
evidently a later species of the human genus than the 
Indian, and possesses different, if not higher capacities. 
His social nature and his progenitive powers are much 
stronger ; his susceptibility to mirthful and pleasura- 
ble excitement far superior to the Indian. His ten- 
dency to aggregate and propagate is much more general 
and common,, both in his native and colonial homes. 
The statistics of slavery and free competition of the 
negro and white show, that in the latter he is always 
worsted, and when mixed in society with the Caucasian, 
free, he decreases proportionably, and becomes gradually 
absorbed and lost. It is a remarkable fact, as a gen- 
eral rule, that mulattoes (hybrid) are more than half 
white, and quadroons are more than three fourths 
white, the stronger element prevailing in the propor- 



82 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

tions, as well as absorbing more rapidly. Miscegena- 
tion, after the first and second step is taken, does not 
seem so repugnant to most people ; and where slavery 
prevailed, and the wide social gulf was kept up between 
the races, the mixture was far more common on the part 
of the white man and black woman, than in society 
where no slavery existed. It is a statistical fact that 
the slaves increased faster in proportion to their num- 
bers, than the free blacks in the same or other states, 
no doubt partly forced by the policy of owners ; and if 
a young female negro would refuse to have children by 
a black slave, she would not often refuse it from a free 
white man, and the children would be equally slaves, 
even if the children of the owner. But as the institu- 
tion of slavery is about to be forever abolished in our 
country, and soon in every other, we may look for the 
unobstructed laws of nature and competition to have 
their effect in our country, and if they do, the negro 
will slowly but surely disappear from among our pos- 
terity in the United States ; but he may inhabit for ages, 
or forever, the tropical regions of America and Africa, 
where the Caucasian has no occasion or capacity to live. 
Neither left to himself, nor in mixed society and social 
competition, can the negro hold his even end of the 
chain of being, or the line of progress.- He may be a 
good soldier, but he will not be a good statesman, — I 
speak of the race and the rule, and not of the excep- 
tions, which are hardly enough to prove it. He may 
be a good farmer, but he will not be a good mechanic ; 
he may be a good fiddler, but he will not master the 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 83 

piano ; lie may dance well, but he will not climb well ; 
he may count the cattle, but he will not count the 
stars; he may go to market with a wagon, but he will 
not go to market with a cargo ; he may measure the 
distance to the city, but he will not measure the dis- 
tance to Mars : he may survey the farm, but he will not 
survey the heavens ; he may make a banjo, but he will 
not make a chronometer; he may make a preacher, 
but he will not make a philosopher ; he may get the 
strongest and hardest kind of religion, and have it 
badly, but he will never be a philosophical Christian, 
or a scientific Pantheist. Give him his equal right to 
land and life, and let him run his race in this world, 
and find his home in the next. There can be no rea- 
sonable doubt that he will gradually recede from the 
northern towards the southern portion of the Union, 
and gradually die out on the shores of the Gulf, not per- 
secuted by the superior Caucasian, but by immutable 
laws of nature, beaten in the competitive conflict and 
struggle for advancement. 

In government and religion the negro cannot com- 
pete in the race with us, nor adopt the forms that are 
adapted to us. In all conflicts of races in miscegena- 
tion or combat, the weaker goes to the wall, and the 
strength that compels it is intellect as well as arm. 
We may, therefore, count the negro out in the future 
of America, and unless he retires to his own dominions, 
and maintains his own nationality, like the swarm of 
human beings on the Pacific coast of Asia, he will 
disappear as a distinct race, after the Indian and the 



x- 



84 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

Esquimaux. Neither emancipation, colonization, Chris- 
tianity, or Spiritualism will save him, though the 
latter will, no doubt, make room for him in the other 
world. 

I now approach the legitimate subject of my dis- 
course, asking pardon for this long digression, in which 
I have run off after the Indian and negro, and followed 
one into the Pacific, and the other into the Gulf. 
Human governments have ever been progressive. Not 
in direct line of lineal national descent, but often rising 
and falling with nations, to be advanced by the next 
and succeeding power. Every nation that establishes 
and enforces unnatural laws, seals its own doom for 
destruction (ours would have been sealed in slavery^ 
had it not been rescued). England seals hers by rob- 
bing the poor of their natural right to land, and tying 
her domain up in titles to her aristocracy, and also in 
her unjust system of taxation, which takes three fourths 
of the poor man's earnings, and but a small share of 
the income of the rich, while the duties of the govern- 
ment are far greater in protecting the rich man and his 
property. All the old governments failed to perpetu- 
ate themselves for this reason, and so will every new one, 
till one shall be formed and based on natural rights and 
human justice. Tyranny, arbitrary and absolute, is 
the proper and appropriate government in paganism. 
Monarchy, legalized limited confederacy, constitutional 
law, and statutory enactments, are the proper form for 
Christianity, and pure democracy for spiritualism. 

There is no democratic government yet, but ours is 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 85 

progressive, and, is approaclnng and preparing for it. 
Such maybe perpetual. No other can. No govern- -^ 
ment or religion can be permanent, perpetual, and 
self-existent, that supports kings or priests with divine 
rights or exclusive privileges. A monarchy in heaven 
or on earth is a false and falling system ; and no king, 
in either world, can rule -without rebellions, and final 
overthrow. When Christianity preaches a monarchy in 
heaven, it preaches a falsehood ; and when it supports 
a monarchy on earth, it lends aid to a structure that 
must fail and fall in spite of its prayers and all the 
help it can get from God to save it. Nature has no 
titled aristocracy and no lineal descendants, if such 
acquire supremacy. Knowledge is not transferable 
in title-deeds, nor inherited in heirship ; neither is 
wisdom, nor the right to rule. Every ruler should 
return his authority to the people, and derive it from 
them by their own voluntary selection. A democratic 
government is one that spreads out and lowers down 
on to all the people, and not one that rests on the 
heads of only a few aristocrats, and crushes the rest 
with unjust enactments. A true democracy must, 
and will, give woman an equal share, and chance, and 
compensation with man, socially, politically, and reli- 
giously — in education, in profession, in politics — and 
pay for labor, &c. We have not reached it, but ours 
is the only nation that approximates it. We are slowly 
but surely approaching it. Slavery was the dark cloud 
that hung heaviest over us. It is about removed. The 
injustice to and oppression of woman is the next, and 
8 



86 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

the monopoly of the soil the next. The gradual and 
final extension of the right of suffrage to both sexes 
will remove the latter, and many other minor evils that 
prevent our entering upon a system of government and 
religion that can hold out to the end. 

Democracy and spiritualism, which, conjoined, will 
be the government and religion of the future, are alone 
capable, of all forms of each, of being perpetuated to 
the end of the race. Greece and Rome, and Gaul and 
Britain, have had their strong forms of civil and mili- 
tary government and power ; and their arms, each in 
turn, slacken and fail, as have other powers before 
them. The pet Jews (the God-chosen people), with 
their Jehovah king, and lesser kings, selected and 
anointed by him (through the priests, of course), have 
gone to the wall, or to the ends of the earth, scattered 
in fragments, a nation no more, for not even a God 
(such a God) could perpetuate such a wicked and 
corrupt government. Neither can it ever gather and 
reinstate them. It matters not in the least how much 
religion a nation has, how many priests it supports, and 
how many fasts or thanksgivings it has ; prayer and 
sermons cannot save it against nature. No amount of 
Christianity can establish and make permanent slav- 
ery, or the slave confederacy ; for they have abundance 
of Christianity, and plenty of priests to say the prayers 
for the rebels, and praise God for his help. So the 
Jews had ; so had Rome and England ; yet all will not 
do. Nature pays no regard to prayers, nor to the gods 
that men set up and worship. She lets down a nation, 



BELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 87 

with its God, as easily as if it had none, or with its 
religion, as if it had none. Paganism saves no nation, 
although the oldest nations are pagan in religion. So 
Christianity saves no nation, not even from its sins; and 
as^ it saves no nation, so no souls, as I learn from the 
spirit world, have been saved by it. Yet it was not, 
is not, without value. It is the chimney-pipe, or flue, 
through which man, in his social stove of tyranny , 
over woman and his black or white fellow-being, blows 
off his windy and wordy gas in prayer and praise of 
God for the blessings of what he calls civilization, 
when really he is not civilized at all, as his constant 
wars and tyranny show. It being the fitting religion 
for an age of antagonism, we shall, of course, have 
another for an age of harmony, peace, and brother- 
hood. And as monarchy, aristocracy, absolutism, and 
Christianity go together, we may expect, as govern- 
ments pass into the hands of the people, and become 
democratic, spiritualism, as the democratic religion, 
will take the place of Christianity, with its God-king, 
and especial favoritism and aristocracy, in heaven as 
on earth. Man's natural right to land as well as to ', 
liberty, will be asserted in the new government and 
religion. For man can no more live without land 
than without air ; yet he is robbed of it before he is 
born by government and laws, and even Christianity 
joins in the robbery, and never defends him. A child 
born in Massachusetts or Maryland has no right to be 
there more than one born in Ireland has to be there ; 
and if male or female, at the age of twenty-one is 



88 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

a trespasser even in his or her father's house or barn, 
and a vagrant if stopping to sleep by the road-side ; and 
yet he or she has no claim upon the parents for means 
(by law) to purchase a place to stand or sit, or lie 
down to die. 

True, he, if it be he^ has a right to sell himself 
out to labor, and earn the means to purchase land, 
if he can, which in America he can do, because wages 
are high and land cheap ; but in England, in some 
parts, one hundred years of labor, at the wages and 
price of land, would not enable him to purchase, from 
what he could save, one acre of farm land. So there 
he is an outcast, and had better go straight back from 
whence he came, or hurry over to a better govern- 
ment. But if it is she, and not Ae, that is of age, what 
must she do ? Surely she cannot earn money and 
purchase land to raise her bread and clothes on. So 
she must sell herself for life at the best bargain she 
can get, or best offer for her service, and the sacrifice 
of her body, and liberty of person and property, and 
have her food and clothes for her labor the rest of her 
life ; or, anticipating this necessity at twenty-one, take 
an earlier offer, and go from home at an imripe age, 
and for her premature effort, to be a social and sexual 
companion for man, find an early grave, and prema- 
ture entrance on the life beyond. It is, indeed, painful 
to look at our political, social, and religious systems 
and their combined cruelties, in which each aids and is 
adapted to the other; and were it not for the single 
hope which spiritualism holds out of a better future 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 89 

for US, we might hang our '^ harps on the willows," 
and go mourning the rest of our lives. Or we might, 
indeed, wish the Indian's fate were ours, and stop 
propagation on the earth ; or all take the Shaker 
religion, and close up the race with the present gen- 
eration. But there is hope, and that hope is in our , 
country and government, and our spiritualism. The 
two together, in their march and progress, promise 
for man a redemption from the gulf of tyranny and 
slough of sectarianism. Aristocratic pomp and pride, 
which have ruled in court and church, even here will 
pass away, and man and nature shall be recognized in 
the land. 

As governments and religion correspond to and 
with each other, we have no government adapted to 
spiritualism ; but this of the United States was, and is, 
nearest, and, of course, will be nearer still when slav- 
ery and aristocracy are abolished ; and aristocracy 
always exists where slavery is one of its props, and 
a main one here goes out as slavery goes. We know 
that spirits and spiritualism have had much to do with 
it, and will have more to do with elevating and equal- 
izing woman with man, as they are both equal in the 
spirit world, and should be here as far as rights and 
responsibilities are concerned. We are rapidly doing 
away with the distinction on the rostrum and in the 
pulpit, both on religious and political subjects ; and 
when it is fully admitted that a woman can address 
the voters, and tell them how to vote, and explain to 
them more than they know of politics and policy, it 
8* 



90 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

will soon be seen to be tolly to keep her from voting. 
One right and capacity will imply another, till she 
secures all that man has, even the right to seek a com- 
panion, and choose her husband, if she can get him by 
any means proper for the other party to use. If our 
Congress had an equal number of females and males, 
and our state legislatures also, slavery would have been 
abolished without a war, and fighting would have been 
as great a disgrace in legislative halls as in a church. 
The latter owes its better social condition to the pres- 
ence of ladies, and their equal share and interest in 
the good order and decency of those engaged there. 
In no department of life can man be refined and 
harmonized without the influence and association of 
woman. Hence our colleges and legislative halls are 
ever overrun with rowdyism, riots, ruffianism, vulgar- 
ism, and brutality, more or less as woman is near or 
remote from the scenes. Legislatures are much better 
since the galleries are supplied with ladies, and the 
few colleges where girls are admitted have less of 
rowdyism, &c. 

If the people of this country take the government 
into their own hands, and change it out of tyranny and 
out of slavery, and settle it on their children as an 
inheritance for all, and secure woman's rights and 
children's rights, do justice to all, and defend and 
secure the natural and acquired rights of the weak 
as well as strong, the weak in intellect as well as weak 
in back and arm, they will make it the asylum of 
humanity and the oppressed of all nations, and the 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 91 

country where angels will love to visit and bring and 
bestow blessings on mortals. If we do our duty, angels 
will do theirs to us with pleasure. Some of us already 
know the interest taken by the fathers and patriots 
of this country in its welfare and progress. We have 
heard from them, and regret that the conditions are 
such that they cannot talk to the people as they once 
did, and be recognized as only a few of us recognize 
them ; but such is the case, and they have not more 
control over conditions than we have, and hence they 
are not recognized, and do not often speak. 

As a nation we seem fast passing into a warlike 
or military nation. We can raise and equip, muster 
and march, the largest armies of the world ; but two 
causes are fast moving us out of a military career, and 
putting an end to wars — the rapid discovery of de- 
structive and defensive inventions for land and water, 
which will soon render wars between enlightened na- 
tions impracticable, and the opening intercourse be- 
tween the spirit world and this, which will bring up 
woman, and bring out the better and gentler nature 
of man, and make wars look and seem ridiculous. 

Whenever and wherever spiritualism triumphs, wars 
are at an end, except for defence, and that will not 
come, for the enlightened condition will give them such 
superiority in knowledge and goodness, that no nation 
will attack a nation of spiritualists. Christian nations 
can war with each other ; tliey ever have, and ever will, 
while it is the religion of nations ; but spiritualists 
cannot, and will not, war with or upon each other. 



92 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

Thus the grades of society in its every structure 
correspond each to each — paganism in religion to 
barbarism in government ; Christianity in religion to 
enterprise, intelligence, monarchy, robbery by law, 
antagonism, competition, conflict and wars in govern- 
ment ; the multitude of sects and interests ever cul- 
tivating selfishness, and carrying it forward in religion 
to the next world : spiritualism in religion and har- 
mony, peace, brotherhood, democracy, equality in 
rights, natural law, and natural rights maintained and 
secured for all classes. No wonder there have been so 
many souls looking forward with longing hearts for a 
millennial era, a better government, a renewal of re- 
ligion. For, turn which way we will, to whatever gov- 
erment we will, we shall find it crushing out the lives 
of some class to enrich others — in our country and 
government doing less of it than in any other ; but 
even here robbing a large part of the blacks, and most 
of the women and children, because they are weaker, 
and ever have been robbed by all Christian nations 
and the best governments of the world, and on this 
precedent, as a right, we base our action as a govern- 
ment. New England must follow nearly in the foot- 
steps of Old England — may make a few, but only a 
few, steps in advance ; may leave the laws of primo- 
geniture, the landed estates to families forever, and 
the titles to nobility ; may stop the royal blood from 
running in the veins of a few families, and run it in 
all white Christian families, but leave the heathen 
" out in the cold." But New England made one great 



EELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. 93 

step of progress, unconsciously at least of its great- 
ness and importance. It was when she attempted to 
teach all her children to read the Holy Scriptures : by 
this step she opened their eyes, and they began to see 
the errors and defects of the Bible, and multiply sects 
and sceptics, till, after moving old Harvard forward to 
the outer works of Christianity, Unitarianism, they 
could advance it no farther and hold on to the Bible, and 
then sent out from it such minds as Parker and Emerson 
to explore beyond, and try to find an anchorage for 
it, or some other college on safe ground still beyond. 
The explorations are not yet ended, but will end when 
they find it in spiritualism, and not before ; and then 
we shall see the fruit of New England Puritanism, and 
her efibrts to educate the young to read the Scriptures, 
and see fully illustrated the old adage of raising a 
bird to pick out its eyes. Could the education have 
been confined to reading the Scripture and a few essays, 
&c., it might have added to superstition, and proved the 
truth of Pope's lines, — 

" A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring ; 
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, 
But drinking largely sobers us again." 

It is through this education, general and even uni- 
versal and thorough, that both democracy and spirit- 
ualism are to be incorporated into society ; neither can 
be successfully maintained in an ignorant community. 

The ignorant mind is ever swayed by passion, and 
feelings rule the judgment, if intellect is* subservient 



94 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

to feelings. Such population is ever kept in excite- 
ment on religious, or social, or political questions, by 
a few ambitious or fanatical leaders, — priests or poli- 
ticians, — and mobs, riots, rebellions, or revivals, and 
religious persecutions are successful ; but enlighten the 
mind, educate the people, sober the judgment, bring in 
reason to rule in justice, and let science and philosophy 
prevail, and your riots cease, your mobs cease, your 
rebellions cease. Your revivals cease with the mobs, 
for both are engendered by and in the same mental 
atmosphere and degree of development, as toadstools 
and mushroons of kindred growth, — persecutions for 
religious belief cease ; all forms of tyranny and super- 
stition with them. Natural law and order, and equal 
rights and harmony, follow. Hasten, then, the cause 
of education, as the only salvation and redemption of 
our nation. 

The learned aristocrats of Europe are looking into 
the phenomena of spiritualism, and are trying to see 
how far it can be used in and for their system of gov- 
ernment. But those there or here who want it for 
selfish or oppressive purposes, will soon find it incom- 
patible with tyranny of any kind, and never adapted 
to monarchy or aristocracy in government or religion ; 
hence it cannot be received or adopted in Europe, nor 
could it be here when slavery existed, nor will it long 
tolerate the robbery of women and children, as we do 
in our institutions. The proud may scoff, the haughty 
may sneer, but the spirits will come. The reckless 
may lie, and the wicked may persecute, but still they 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO GOVERNMENT. &5 

come, and come ; and the cause spreads in the light every 
day, where the people are enlightened sufficiently to re- 
ceive it. It is an encouraging fact that our spiritualism 
is most known and most common in the best educated 
and most advanced districts and states of our nation, 
and least known in the darkest and most ignorant 
districts and states ; as in Arkansaw of the slave states, 
and New Jersey of the free, as at the foot, and Mas- 
sachusetts, and Vermont, and Michigan, and parts of 
Ohio and Illinois, on the lead in education and gen- 
eral intelligence, and consequently in our new phi- 
losophy and religion on the lead also. Take, again, 
Illinois as a state, the north part up to the advance in 
both, and the south or Egypt end, dark and ignorant 
in condition of mind generally, but all alive with riots, 
rebellion, and revivals of religion ; far more religious, 
in Christianity, than the north, but have no knowledge 
of, or capacity for, spiritualism. Of course this does 
not apply to the few northerners among them, nor is 
it a charge of dishonesty and wickedness, but a con- 
dition of ignorance for which they are not accountable. 
They are as honest in it as other Christians or poli- 
ticians, for aught I know ; but I cite it as a fact in 
historical corroboration of my position, that spiritual- 
ism is of and for an advanced and educated people, 
and so is democracy ; and that in such, both riots and 
revivals will cease. 

" Tis education formi^ the common mind." 

'Tis education fits it for spiritualism and democracy, 



9b THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

and the two will go together. Wouldst thou hasten 
democracy, aid the cause of universal education ; 
wouldst thou hasten spiritualism, aid the cause of 
universal education ; wouldst thou check either, slacken 
and retard eaucation, tie its hands in Christianity, as 
the Catholic does, and the Sunday schools try, but fail, 
to do among Protestants, and you can darken the 
mental atmosphere, and keep back the spirit world for 
a little while longer. But sooner or later must come 
democracy in government, and spiritualism in religion, 
hand in hand, as married and harmonious partners, 
of which the race shall be the equal children, male 
or female, old or young. Let us hasten the day, — 

" Aid it, tongue, aid it, pen, 
Aid it, hopes of honest men, — " 

for it already dawns in the United States. 



I 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 

In my subject I have an important advantage over 
my clerical brethren, for I have two great Bibles. 
Their great Bible of words, which, at best, are only 
shadows and representatives of things, and records of 
events, which, in this instance and collection, are to me 
fallible and greatly defective, both in testimony and 
fact ; and hence I am glad I am not confined to it, as 
they are, for authority, for I have also the great Bible 
of Nature ever open before me, with its constant cre- 
ation, and infallible laws, and sacred pages of history 
and revelation, in which things, like works, are far 
more sacred and important than words : as doing 
prayers is more sacred than saying them, and works of 
charity better than thoughts of charity, so works of 
God are better than words of God, if we really had 
words of God, of which I have no evidence for certainty. 
All the evidence produced by Christendom in favor of 
the divine authenticity of the Bible, if subjected to our 
rules of evidence in our courts, would not convict a 
person nor recover a judgment ; and as the outside evi- 
dence fails, so the inside evidence fails also, to establish 

* Delivered in Washington, January 29, 1865. 

9 (97) 



98 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

a superior origin to that of other books. If its mar- 
vellous stories were true (or if we could assume their 
truth), then, to be sure, we should have to seek some 
as yet unknown power as the origin of the phenome- 
na, not of the record. The wonderful Samson, and 
Daniel, and Shadrach, and Solomon, and Moses, and 
Aaron, &c., if we could believe the stories, must have 
been a little ahead of our modern magicians ; but so 
far as authority of record is concerned, the Arabian 
Nights and ^sop's fables are as well authenticated to 
me. Those who believe, and who drank in their belief 
and devotion with their mother's milk, and swallowed 
it with her first words, are, of course, in a different 
condition, and wholly excusable for not seeing this as I 
do ; but I must be honest and true to myself and my 
light, as each may be to his and her own. In the outer 
world of sacred things I will find my text, and you will 
excuse me if I assure you that to me God's works are 
holy, and his sayings, written in no book, but in cre- 
ation, are to me his laws and his commands. On my 
heart it is written. Thou shalt not kill, and in my con- 
science it is written. Thou shalt not steal, &c. 

From the sacred things about us, I will select for my 
text, as appropriate on this occasion, the white pond 
lily, as it has its three stages of growth and develop- 
ment, corresponding to man coUectivply, and to some 
earth-lives individually, and is especially appropriate to 
a true and developed spiritualist. Seek it first in its 
miry bed among the filth of surrounding decayed vege- 
table matter ; the cast off shells of insects, debris and 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 99 

matter with offensive odor, is all about it in its ger- 
minal condition. It lias no beauty, no fragrance, no 
white petals and rich stamens. Who would ever for- 
tune-tell it to be a lily of such richness, as it soon be- 
comes by development ? So of man in his first and 
sensual state, both as a race and as an individual. As 
a race surrounded in his early appearance with the 
decayed monsters of the two lower kingdoms, an at- 
mosphere of effluvia noxious, and often poisonous, all 
of creation about him marking the decay of a past 
and dawn of a new epoch. In himself no signs of the 
higher life which he was to attain even here. I have 
already described him in his religion, his government, 
and his social state, and need not repeat it here to show 
you its comparison with my text. Individually the com- 
parison is not less perfect, if we remove the surroundings 
which refined life and society bring about the babe. 
Nature does not raise it above the correspondence. It 
has only bodily and physical demands at first, and no 
idea of neatness or order, nor a sign, save in its eyes 
and form, of that which it is to be. Its fragrance and 
beauty are to be yet brought out and developed ; they 
are only in germ in the child. Fragrance -in flowers 
corresponds to love in the human being, and both are 
equally material particles of matter cast off and tlirown 
out. Eising from its miry bed into the liquid element, 
it expands its form, and develops its power, but still 
holds fast its fragrance, and keeps its petals closely 
folded in, and their whiteness and beauty hidden from 
sight. So of the race rising from paganism and bar- 



100 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

barism into constitutional monarchy and Christianity ; 
it develops its power and expands its dimensions, 
counts the heads and taxes the energies in its dis- 
cordant competition ; but its love of God or man is not 
seen, nor its harmony and beauty displayed. Power, 
not goodness, force, not love, rule in all the Chris- 
tian nations of the earth. The race has not blossomed 
yet ; its whiteness (purity) has not been displayed, nor 
its love, fragrance, thrown out. We are in the water 
yet, have not come to the air and sunshine of spiritual 
life and love ; but we are mighty, almost almighty, in 
some respects ; but it is not in goodness ; it is in force, 
force, force. When a part of our family or nation 
rebel, we force them into subjection, for we have no 
love to conquer them, and if we had, they could not 
appreciate it, for they, too, are in the age of force and 
fight. 

At length the lily, reaching the third stratum of 
matter, the air, enters upon its maturity, and in the sun- 
light and dews, drinks in its pure inspiration, and soon 
opens its petals to the zephyrs ; its stamens are kissed 
by the sun, and its pistils are moistened by the distilled 
dews, and it pours out its fragrance in gentle, yet 
prolific flow, lays bare its beauty, and is admired by all 
who love the beautiful and pure. Such will be, such is, 
man in his third grand division and development of 
life and religion, the spiritual age, when he shall be 
kissed by angels, inspired by spirits with love and 
beauty from the upper sphere, when he shall no more 
know wars and discords, but the harmony of the 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 101 

spheres shall make music in his heart, and his love 
shall overflow his whole being, and shed its halo on all 
around : then this will be a world of light, life, love, 
and peace. No more shall ring the tocsin of war, no 
more shall boom the dogs of war, on ship or shore ; 
peace shall spread her balmy mantle over each land 
and home. Love shall sit in the justice seat, and 
mercy dwell in church and court house ; plenty shall 
reign on every board, and health bless all that are born, 
for then discordant marriages will be unknown, and 
only marriages of love shall be consummated, instead 
of marriages of lust and money. Love relations shall 
bring happy and healthy children in each household, 
and to each loving pair of conjugal parents. Nor 
force, nor fashion, nor pride, nor lust, shall bind more 
the unmated, as now, in legal wedlock of bodies, with 
discordant and disjointed souls. The race, in the de- 
veloped and spiritualized soul, shall blossom over the 
surface of the Christian era, as the spirit world over 
this, or the lily over the water ; audits richness and beauty 
shall attract the angels of the upper sphere more and 
more to meet and mingle with the inhabitants of earth. 
How little does the idle crowd that now throngs the 
thoroughfares of life dream of the beauty in spiritual- 
ism, and in store for them in the unborn ages of the 
future. The heretofore sealed book of man's future 
life, both on earth and in spirit spheres, is now opened, 
and we can read from its pages the here and the here- 
after of earth and heaven, the blind and the stupid, 
on the contrary, notwithstanding. Science has opened 



102 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

her seal, and let us step foot on elemental, which is 
spiritual, ground. Philosophy has opened her seal, 
and exposed to us the grades of being's growth, and 
shown us that the answer to our aspirations and long- 
ings, is in spirit life, to which we are all ticketed 
through as passengers, some on lightning trains, some 
on express trains, some on mail trains, and some on 
accommodation trains ; but all get there sooner or later, 
and dip our silver cups in the flowing springs of the 
" New Atlantis." Religion has opened her seal, and 
let us see her failure to bring the heaven here, but her 
sure pointing to it there, and the ultimate realization 
of all the bright hopes founded on nature and her 
revelation, and the reaching at last of the Elysian shores 
by all the children of earth. 

Government has opened her seal, and let us look for- 
ward to perfection of democracy in justice, law, and 
order in the future of man on earth, in which he shall 
prepare for the heaven above, which is a kingdom with- 
out a king, law without lawyers, health without doc- 
tors, sermons without priests, and justice without judge 
or jury — the age of virtue, and peace, and brotherhood 
which she has in store for us. The social and holy 
relation of marriage has opened her seal, and shown us 
the happy pairs of the future, where two beings are 
blended in one life, and in true love and union on the 
holy and only basis of marriage, the equality of each, 
and the equal personal freedom of each in seeking and 
living its highest life and love, and the true mating 
on that plane of equal freedom, and equal love, and 



EELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 103 

equal union ; health and happiness are to follow in the 
limited offspring. 

The spirits have opened their seal, and begun a com- 
munication with mortals, assuring us of their safe 
arrival on the other shore, and the opened page of pro- 
gression there that awaits all mortals. Tiie seventh 
seal of celestial inspiration is also broken, and a few 
mortals are reached and inspired by the angels of 
harmony and love, and begin to blossom into the con- 
dition of beauty and glory even here. The heart that has 
drank from these fountains of life will be thankful for 
existence, with all its burdens of care and sorrow, even 
in society as it is ; but with only the dark history of the 
Jews and the Christians, and conflicting antagonisms of 
the present, it would breathe no feeling of thankfulness 
or praise. Only the bright future can draw from the 
soul its adoration and admiration of the divine, of God 
in bis ways of goodness seen and felt in the laws that 
carry us on in development and harmony into the sphere 
of compensation and love. For each soul I see open a ^ 
celestial arcana of brightness and glory, in which it may 
forever gather new facts of knowledge, and new gems of 
truth, and enrich itself with jewels of gladness forever- 
more. Life is. in us and is of us, and the goal is set beyond 
us in a law of compensation. Our work is not to glorify 
God, but to glorify ourselves and our souls forever. 
Man was not made for God's glory, biit for his own. 
Nothing could be added to infinity. The finite may 
change forever and never reach the infinite. The 
human soul, a germ at first, in earthly body, develops 



104 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

slowly, and but partially ripens here, and then passes 
to its spirit home, to live out and realize its ideal. No 
mattei^ how high we fix the standard ; there is time, and 
room, and means to attain it if in finite reach, and if 
the ideal be in finite reach the real is also, for man 
works to ideal pattern in all outer results, and often 
attains the realization of what was a little before even 
by himself considered impossible. Both the race and the 
individual are constantly startled by results that were 
not supposed attainable, as the learned Dr. Lardner 
proved the impracticability of crossing the ocean with 
steam ships, and then crossed it three times himself in 
them ; so soon were his conclusions refuted that they 
had hardly time to be circulated. So are and will be 
the theories that show how impossible it is for spirits of 
deceased persons to return and communicate to the liv- 
ing. Several persons had put out their theories and au- 
thority to prove it could not be, and before it had been 
fairly circulated they were on the other shore and trying 
to refute it themselves by communicating. Dr. Bell, 
President Pierce, of Harvard, and Edward Everett, 
among them, showing how weak is human intellect 
when set up against nature and her laws. 

President Mahan and the Pope will soon follow and 
be knocking at the door to confess their ignorance and 
folly, to and through some rapping or writing medium. 
Already spirits have been rapping to the Pope to notify 
him of his approach to the new sphere, where not only 
his temporal but his ecclesiastical power will depart 
from him, and where he can see through the thin wafer 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 105 

farces of his religion, and prayer-reading, and purgato- 
rial salvations and redemptions. 

In my travels of the last ten years it has been my 
fortune to meet many persons, and some entire families, 
who have passed into the third stage of human and 
spiritual development. I have found many in the first 
degree of spiritualism, or the harmonial plane. Har- 
mony with themselves first and then with all others. 
Tiiis is the first step in the religion of spiritualism. This 
beats the sword of anger into the ploughshare of truth for 
improvement and reform ; the spears of envy, jealousy, 
backbiting, and slander, into pruning-hooks of disci- 
pline, self-reform, and growth. In this stage men 
and women learn war on each other's characters or 
persons no more, and the individual sovereignty of 
soul is recognized and appreciated in each for each. 
Each person, man or woman, black or white, is ac- 
knowledged to be the owner of his or her body, with a 
right to control it in every and any manner not to the 
injury or detriment of another ; and no one has a right 
to any sort of ownership or control of another, except 
in a paternal or maternal guardianship of children. 

This first degree of harmony would put our nation, 
or any society, beyond war and strife, slander and per- 
sonal abuse, and especially the abuse of wives by hus- 
bands, now so common, and each would be so vastly 
the gainer thereby, that no price can fix its value. 
We have seen that Christianity cannot do it. Now let 
us try the efficacy of spiritualism in a general applica- 
tion, since it has succeeded in many individual cases. 



106 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

I have also found some who have reached and taken 
the second,_degre_e of spiritualism religiously, — Frater- 
nization. In this state each respects and regards the 
rights of another as his own, and would as soon, or 
sooner, cheat himself as another. Honesty is sacred, 
and each person is as a brother or sister in every per- 
sonal or pecuniary transaction, and in all dealings. 
Such persons would borrow and lend without usury 
(interest); would never deceive in a trade, nor ask 
more than the value of an article, nor more than he 
would be willing to give in a change of position, know- 
ing the value of the article offered. All being members 
of one family, each would help each on the road to 
life, and then Jordan would not be " a hard road to travel 
on." Some Christian societies have tried this among 
themselves, but have ever found it necessary to excuse 
their failure, by their theory of a totally depraved nature, 
when it was far more attributable to a depraved social 
and religious system. The effort should be to get on 
to a natural basis, for they failed because their religion 
was not up to the natural standard. They needed a 
forgiving Savior, and, having one, charged the evil on 
nature. We claim that our mother Nature is perfect, 
and we perverted and depraved, and hence cannot 
make her a pack-horse for our sins or short-comings. 
What a scattering of the Wall Street brokers, stock- 
jobbers, and money-changers, a system of brotherhood 
would make. The first step would disband and scat- 
ter armies and lawsuits ; the second, speculators and 
money-changers, bankers, brokers, and competitive mer- 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 107 

chants, and the whole tribe of hungry sharpers that 
live between the producer and consumer. I have also, 
as before stated, found a few in my travels who have 
taken the third and last degree of spiritualism, the 
Affectionization, in which the soul basks in divine love, 
and loves its neighbor as itself, and the supreme intelli- 
gence with all its might and heart. It is the full-blown 
lily, the growth of soul to the drinking in of inspira- 
tion and giving out of pure love from the white petals 
of the soul. Such are ripe for the life beyond, and the 
angels await them with outstretched arms and hands 
loaded with coronets of flowers and wreaths of affection, 
and songs of greeting salute them from the spirit home as 
they enter the pearly gates of a celestial paradise. No 
scowling monk or haughty priest sits at tlie gate by 
which they enter the spirit world, to ask their belief, or 
baptism, or registry of name in church record. They 
enter no priestly synagogue, and pass under no secta- 
rian yoke, but go at once " to the regions of the 
blessed," in " the land of the hereafter," "the home 
of the soul," of the free, and pure, and loving. 

But my hearers often say they have seen spiritualists 
and even mediums, whose daily life and conduct were 
not as good and exemplary, even by these rules, as the 
Christian's. So have I ; and I have seen Christians and 
persons of enlightened minds, whose daily life and 
conduct were far worse than Mohammedan, or pagan, or 
heathen, or barbarian ; but these exceptions are not 
to be taken for the rule, but only help to prove it. 
Christianity is superior to paganism, and enlighten- 



108 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

meiit to barbarism. So I have seen pantheists and 
infidels whose conduct was worse than the general 
conduct of Christians ; but the prisons and jails, and 
the records of crimes, and society in general, all testify 
to the general superiority in morals and good conduct 
of pantheists and infidels over Christians ; for, although 
there are only about one fifth of our population pro- 
fessing Christians, yet they have a larger proportion 
in the prisons than any others of different or of no 
professed religious belief. We are to judge each in 
its general character, and in this I am sure the spirit- 
ualists are far in advance of the Christians of any 
sect ; and it must be borne in mind that we now num- 
ber by millions in this nation alone. I have seen edu- 
cated persons much w^rse than any illiterate persons 
I ever knew ; but does any one use such an argument 
against schools or education, or the other against 
Christianity ? I do not, nor can I allow it any weight 
against mediums or spiritualism. In the aggregate 
they are far ahead, as you will all know, when you 
know them and the Christians and infidels as I do. 
You will also know that those called infidels are 
next to them, and in advance of sectarian superstition 
of any kind. Let no one be frightened back from 
looking at and into spiritualism, by an acquaintance 
with, or story of some defective or even depraved me- 
dium, or member of the great spiritual movement. 
Never forget that our faith and doctrine is never to 
turn one out, nor to turn the cold shoulder to any 
one. We are all brethren, and all defective in degree 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 109 

and know no law or rule for turning one of Nature's 
children out of the brotherhood of man or household 
of God. So you may look for such as you call bad 
to be in our ranks, either as mediums or believers, 
as long as there are such, with the assurance from us, 
that if we and our religion cannot cure them, there 
is no hope in this sphere, and they may as well stay 
with us as to wear a Cain-mark of expulsion from their 
kindred. Christians turn refractory members out ; 
but where do they turn them ? and what the object ? 
Is it to improve and benefit the victim, and because 
they claim to be holier than him they condemn ? 
Spiritualists turn none out ; they, like nature and the 
Divine law, hold all in the grand chain of brotherhood, 
and invite all to come up higher, and it is an evidence 
that a person has capacity when he or she is a me- 
dium, or has a slight knowledge even of phenomenal 
spiritualism. Phenomenal spiritualism takes persons 
in through the door of the senses, and often has no 
effect on the person beyond, or in his or her higher 
character. Philosophical spiritualism brings persons 
in through the intellect, and often goes no farther 
with them. They become satisfied, and stop in this 
court of the great temple. Religious spiritualism 
brings persons in through the heart and affections, 
and filling the soul with love, gives it the highest 
and purest food of its interior nature. Some begin 
in phenomena, and follow on to the religion. Some 
stop, and use only the phenomena. Many mediums 
do this as well as others. Some go from the first to 
10 



110 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

the second and third, and some only to the second ; 
so we find the road strewed with specimens and trav- 
ellers, and some laying off their bodies at each stage 
and station on the earthly journey. 

Let no one suppose we can come from paganism, or 
barbarism, or Christianity, into spiritualism by a sudden 
change. It is not a belief to be accepted, a creed to 
be confessed, or a condition to be attained by having 
the heart changed " in the twinkling of an eye." It is a 
growth of soul to be attained only in the natural F^y. 

Persons loaded with Christianity, as some bodies 
are with calomel, will require as much drenching as 
the latter get at the water-cures, before they can be 
cleansed of the sediment of an old ism that belongs 
to a grade and age below. But if you delay begin- 
ning to study and learn these great truths, you put 
off the day of your redemption and salvation accord- 
ingly. It takes seven years to cast off the old body 
in life by radiation, washing, &c. It will take as long 
for most persons to cast off the old religion, especially 
if they are full of the fire and brimstone of Calvinism, 
or the pepper and salt of Methodism, in which they 
so often fire you up with a sort of religious capsiciun, 
and salt you down in discipline, to keep you for use. 
Ours is only a growth of soul arising usually from 
the discovery of facts or philosophy, or the soul's de- 
mand for a higher and better religion than Christi- 
anity. Harmonized, fraternized, or affectionized persons 
or families can testify to its value. No others can. 
No bigoted sectarian can give its value, more than a 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. Ill 

bigoted pagan priest can the worth of Christianity, for 
they hold the same relation to it. A man may get re- 
ligion in Christianity (at least so they testify) in the 
" twinkling of an eye ; " but he camiot get spiritual- 
ism in any such way, and it is often those who have 
only begun to look at it that are taken by its enemies 
for its examples and exponents, and they are glad 
to find them very imperfect in character and conduct ; 
but it is ' often the case, that all they have of these 
were derived from their Christian training, or inherited 
from Christianity in parents, or the atmosphere that 
surrounded them in their education and growth. 
Both mediumship and study of spirits and spiritualism, 
tend rapidly to develop the soul if applied and used 
by voluntary effort for that purpose. Phenomenal me- 
diumship, where the subject is an unconscious instru- 
ment, is the least valuable to the subject, although 
often the best for others ; but it is often the case where 
the medium is a conscious and normal instrument, 
that its value is not appreciated as is the influence 
and communications by others who obtain them from 
their friends by and through those mediumistic instru- 
ments. But in cases of mediumship where the subject 
has the normal use of his or her faculties, and makes 
use of them in connection with mediumship, such 
persons grow exceedingly fast, and rapidly outstrip 
all competitors in soul-growth who have not these 
advantages ; such is the case with N. Frank White, 
Mrs. F. 0. Hyzer, Emma Hardinge, Achsia W. Sprague, 
J. M. Peebles, H. T. Cliild, and a score of others 



112 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

whom I could name, but mostly less known to the 
public. Mediumship is the greatest of blessings if well 
used, but is. sometimes, like wealth, used to destroy the 
usefulness of the possessor, and his or her enjoyment 
also. Like wealth, also, it need never be a curse or 
an injury. 

It is the perverted and not the proper use that de- 
stroys the subject, and renders it a curse in both cases 
where it might be, and often is, a great blessing. Me- 
diumship is much like wealth ; those who have it often 
set no value on it, and take no care of it ; while those 
seek it who have it not, and if gained by great effort, 
usually appreciate it and profit by it, as do some upon 
whom it descends without being sought after. But 
mediumship is not spiritualism, as some persons sup- 
pose : far from it. It is the phenomenal phase of spirit 
intercourse. Like the miracles or fables (parables) 
in the New Testament, they were not Christianity, 
but were as much or as nearly so as spirit manifes- 
tations of our day are to being spiritualism. There 
is also still more of correspondence, if one choose to 
use it, to those who receive the Christian record as 
authority, which I do not. Their phenomena were not 
as well nor as generally received as ours, and more 
opposed, even more effectually, by the same class of 
opposers, namely, the priests, or more particularly 
by the Scribes and Pharisees, which in our time are 
the priests and newspaper-writers, or the pulpit and 
the press which use their influence and weapons, 
as did the same class in the days of Jesus and his 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL UPE. 113 

disciples, according to Christian authority, which I need 
not deny while it serves my purpose against those who 
receive it as sacred. 

They also claim that a great light dawned on the 
world, at that time in much greater obscurity than 
spiritualism has dawned, and that it was born with 
Jesus in a stable, and of a girl who had been betrothed 
to a man two or three months, but not practically mar- 
ried till after the birth ; and whether she was or was 
not a virgin (as we use the term) it is not likely that 
any writer of the events knew. If the priests did, they 
did not tell it to the writers ; but the sense in which 
they used the term in that day signified only an un- 
married woman, and in that sense she may have been 
so, if the record is true. They also claim that this 
great light came out of an obscure place, called Naza- 
reth, which may compare to the rise of spirit rappings 
in the modern Nazareth of the Methodist church, which 
started in the Methodist family of the Foxes, in the 
obscure town of Hydeville, New York, but soon went 
to Eochester, and took name from there in Rochester 
knoTikings. The obscurity, marvel, and unpopularity, 
were much greater in the origin of Christianity than in 
spiritualism ; and as to unnatural, and even absurd and 
ridiculous claims, ours bears no comparison ; for we 
deny all miracles and supernatural agencies in the 
matter, and only allow of mystery because our ignorance 
of the law makes some phenomena mysterious to us, 
which will, however, lose their mysterious character 
when we understand the laws that produce them. 
10* 



114 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

Siicli may, it is true, be also the case with most or all 
of the ancient mysteries and miracles, even the origin 
and birth of Jesus, when we obtain (if we ever do) 
the facts, and know the law that might have produced 
them. Certainly the birth of a child from an un- 
married woman is no mystery, and it has since often 
occurred where the mother has given its paternal 
parentage to no earthly person, and others, if not the 
mother, might have attributed it to God, if the super- 
stitious world would receive such testimony. But I am 
glad no such story in our day can find a foothold on 
such slender testimony as that of Jesus rests on ; if it 
could, we should have no chance for our rational religion. 
The new Bible and Mormon story will not take, and 
even that was not as absurd as the Old or New Testa- 
ment stories ; but it was born too late, and has only 
had its success founded on its natural and rational 
basis and its consistency with events we know and 
understand, and with the growth and progress of the 
race. There is one singular fact that may be men- 
tioned here in this connection. It is the fact that this 
great event came in the middle of this century, and at 
about the time when thousands of prophetic Christians 
and some records looked for and pointed to a great 
event and the dawn of a new era for man. But it did 
not come more (or much less) in accordance with their 
expectations than did the advent of Christianity with 
that of the Jews, which they are said to have expected 
about the time Jesus was born, and which Christians 
declare was the fulfilment of ancient prophecy to the 



RELATION OP SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 115 

Jews, but which they rejected as obstinately as our 
modern Christians do the new era born in the advent 
of spiritualism. I have not much faith in these old or 
new prophecies, nor in any ; but certainly it is a re- 
markable coincidence in this case, and may be used to 
those who do have confidence in them, and are ever 
referring to them in proof of their theory. 

It is an old saying (or a new one), that "what is 
sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander ;" and it is 
well to teach them that by their own mode of warfare, 
there are " blows to take as well as blows to give." Jesus 
and his disciples are said to have had as poor success 
among the Jews, and even among their own kindred, 
as mediums of our day have with Christians, and often 
with their own husbands, wives, parents, or children. 
Most especially was that and is this unsuccessful where 
it interferes with pride, popularity, wealth, influence, 
and office. Mediums often find their bitterest enemies 
in their own household ; and sometimes I have seen the 
medium most violently opposed to the influence and to 
the spirits, and to prefer the flesh-pots of earthly sen- 
sualism to the spiritual influence of angel guides. I 
have known them to take all means in their power to 
resist the influence, and sometimes to conquer it and 
drive it ofi", and thus bring to themselves a long day 
of sorrow and repentance. Other cases have yielded 
and grown most rapidly in soul and intelligence 
under the tuition and guidance of spirits, the most 
remarkable instance of which, in our country, is A. 
J. Davis, who has been most thoroughly educated 



116 THE GIST OF SPIRITUALISM. 

and fiilly disciplined by his spirit guides and teachers. 
I may here say a word of the practical discipline of 
spiritualism on life. Under its teachings and guidance 
man will abandon the use of intoxicating drinks, of 
filthy tobacco, of vitiating swine's flesh, and mostly of 
the condiments of the culinary department, that add 
nothing to health and comfort in life, and will so live 
as to enjoy the best of health, and get the most out of 
life ; will act and be natural and consistent in his social 
and sexual relations, and consistent with the good and 
health of all persons and parties ; will so educate and 
train children, as to enable them to see the path in life 
that leads to and through the pleasantest walks, and 
with least sickness and conflict. Live natural, act 
natural, be natural, are its teachings ; be honest, be 
just, be truthful, be charitable, are its instructions. 

And now, my friends, I have tried to place before 
you some of the strong points and some of the weak 
ones of our system, and to explain to you its claims 
upon your time, and the reason for its demands on 
public attention ; and in closing this and these lectures, 
let me once more earnestly entreat you, not for me or 
my benefit, but for you and your benefit, not to pass 
this subject by lightly, but give it your attention and 
the serious reflection which it deserves at your hands. 
And I can assure you, by my own experience and tes- 
timony, that you will be amply rewarded, as I have 
been. I, too, like some of you, have fed at a public 
crib, and had the confidence, trust, and votes of the 
people ; but I left that field of useful labor (as it is 



RELATION OF SPIRITUALISM TO SOCIAL LIFE. 117 

when properly used) for this new, and at that time, in 
public estimation, ridiculous subject, and I have seen 
it rise in importance, have felt its worth, and realized 
its strength, and can recommend it to you. Not that 
I would ask you to " sell that which thou hast," and 
follow me or this light, for that is not necessary now. 
Not that I would ask you to leave the political field, or 
quit your office or place ; but do not let any place or 
temporary position lift you above knowing the truth of 
these things and this destiny, for at this time the close 
observer of passing events in our nation can see no 
other safety for us but spiritualism and spirit guid- 
ance, and we are already feeling it, although by many 
even who are instruments, it is denied or unknown. 
Yet we see that we are really piloted now in this dark 
gulf of internal conflict, by angel guides, and we 
know our capital, and our nation has been saved by 
the unseen guardians who saved it in earlier times, and 
founded here a nation in which this great era of future 
humanity could be developed and realized. We know 
too that the spirits of our great statesmen and patriots 
are still engaged in building up and defending our 
national existence. A Washington has not forgotten 
nor lost his interest in his beloved country. A 
Jefferson has not lost his interest in his favorite con- 
stitution. A Franklin has still his hope on his native 
land ; and a Webster and a Douglas still look and hope 
for union and strength ; and all such, even Clay, whose 
degenerate son disgraced his loyal sire, and many more 
southern men, look with pity on tlie folly and wicked- 



118 THE GIST OP SPIRITUALISM. 

ness of secession, and are aiding the nation in its strug- 
gle for existence and unity. A Jackson is as firm to- 
day as when he said, " The Union must and shall be 
preserved." Let us not disregard these spirit friends, 
whose interest is still as great or greater than ours 
in our Union. Let us not turn from their counsel, nor 
spurn their advice, for they are surely with us, and 
with us interested, in this trying hour and terrible 
conflict. 

Now, my friends, as I leave you, perhaps for a year, 
perhaps forever, let me, as a last request, ask you not 
to pass this subject over lightly, nor give only the idle 
thought of a leisure hour, but rather make a point of 
business to look into its merits. I have done so suc- 
cessfully, and you can. I have found it profitable, and 
you will. I shall long retain and kindly cherish the 
memory of your attendance on my course of lectures 
in this city, and the constant and candid attention you 
have given me, amid the many and pressing calls and 
duties you have in common with all the citizens of our 
struggling country, in its effort to maintain its national 
existence. Do well and farewell. 



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